A former British paratrooper, who set out alone on a 19,000-mile UK coastline walk has completed the challenge, raising £500,000 for charity and returning home with a partner, dog and baby son in tow.
Chris Lewis, 43, was joined by hundreds of cheering supporters as he completed the final mile of his walk, which began on Llangennith beach on the Gower peninsula, near his home city of Swansea, south Wales, on 1 August 2017.
The father of two, who served with 2nd Battalion, Parachute regiment, had struggled to cope after returning to civilian life. After suffering with anxiety and depression and facing homelessness, Lewis decided on the challenge during an epiphany on the beach.
He set off on the epic trek wearing an ill-fitting pair of borrowed boots with just £10 in his pocket, limited supplies and the aim of raising £100,000 for SSAFA, the armed forces charity.
On Saturday, Lewis returned to the spot where it all began, having raised five times that amount, with his adopted dog, Jet, a lurcher cross, and fiancee Kate Barron, 36, who joined his walk almost three years ago.
The couple had their first child, a boy named Magnus Lewis, in May last year. His parents joined him in walking across a finish line festooned with bunting made by well-wishers from around the world.
Before the family completed the final mile, they were told they had reached their increased target of £500,000 and were handed a letter of congratulations from King Charles.
At the finish line Lewis said: “To say we’re chuffed is an understatement. This walk has restored my faith in humanity and hopefully other people’s too. I really am so proud and over the moon.”
Barron, who left a teaching job in London to join Lewis on the walk, admitted it could take a while for it all to “sink in”.
“I’ve been walking for almost three years now and this has become a way of life for us,” she said.
“I think to wake up in a couple of days and not have that sense of mission to move forward every day on the coast is going to be so strange.”
Sir Andrew Gregory, chief executive of SSAFA, presented Lewis with champagne as he crossed the finish line, calling his achievement “remarkable”.
Gregory also described how the charity had helped Lewis, who served until 2004 and was a single parent to his daughter, Caitlin.
During his coastal adventure, Lewis spent the first coronavirus lockdown on an uninhabited Shetland island, Hildasay.
Three years in, he met Barron in Scotland and she joined his walk a few months later.
Lewis’s bestselling book, Finding Hildasay, written on an A4 pad while he walked, features a foreword by broadcaster Ben Fogle, who has supported Lewis during his journey along with other famous faces including astronaut Tim Peake.
More than 147,000 people follow his Chris Walks the UK Facebook page.
In an interview with the Observer in February, Lewis recalled the gruelling early stages of the walk. He ran out of money, went days without food and his tent leaked. On another occasion he cracked a tooth in half and had to perform a makeshift extraction with the aid of an old guitar string and a gulp or two of whisky. But he never once thought of giving up.
Of the challenge he told Sky News: “For me the finish line is all about having made a personal change, and it’s very rare that I will ever say this, but how proud I am for having done that myself and it’s worked.”
