Since army veteran Chris Lewis set out on a 14,000km walk of the UK coastline in 2017 – with just £10 in his pocket – he’s adopted a dog, written a book, met his fiancée, had a baby and raised thousands for charity. Gayle Ritchie catches up with him as he nears the end of his mammoth challenge
From rummaging through bins for food to pulling out one of his own teeth and sleeping in toilets, army veteran Chris Lewis’s charity trek of the UK coastline has been fraught with difficulties.
However, since he set off from his hometown of Swansea in August 2017 – with just £10 in his pocket and two days’ rations – Chris has adopted a stray dog, met the love of his life, had a baby, is on target to raise £300,000 for a military charity and has become friends with Ben Fogle.
Not bad for a man who, less than six years ago, had hit rock bottom, suffering from anxiety and depression so severe he would shut himself in his bedroom for weeks.
His new book, Finding Hildasay – published last month – has a foreword from Ben, with whom he made friends on his travels, and is already a Sunday Times bestseller.
Mercy of the elements
In December 2020, having heard Chris was in Aberdeenshire, I planned to meet him as he passed through Cruden Bay.
It was a wild afternoon, and I wasn’t surprised when he texted to tell me he might be late.
He was at the mercy of the elements, after all, walking along the beach, sticking at all times to the coast, sand whipping up into his face, with a ferocious wind battering against him.
Darkness was falling and the phone signal in the area ranged from poor to nonexistent.
Ultimately, we never did manage to connect, but I remained curious about his progress, and jumped at the chance to chat on the phone a few days ago. His book had blown me away.
Left homeless
It told of how former paratrooper Chris, left homeless after leaving the army in 2004, lived on the streets before seeking help from military charity SSAFA.
Then, in the summer of 2017, and suffering from severe depression, the single dad had a flash of inspiration while surfing – his only respite.
Gazing out to sea, he made an impulsive decision to challenge himself to walk the entire UK coastline.
“I didn’t feel I was giving up much because I was so unhappy,” he tells me.
“I just thought, I love being outdoors, I love the coast, I love the sea, so why don’t I just do that all the time and see what happens?”
Within a few days, he’d rustled up a tent and walking boots and set off on his journey.
Uninhabited island
A major highlight of his expedition was spending three months during lockdown in 2020 in an old shepherd’s hut on the uninhabited island of Hildasay, off the west coast of the Shetland mainland.
Here, he turned slightly feral, he admits, and, taking inspiration from Tom Hanks in Cast Away, made friends with a washed-up football – his very own Wilson! He named her Hilda and moved her around the island, saying hello whenever he passed.
Loneliness
His dog, Jet, whom he adopted in Irvine, helped with his loneliness, and when he met fellow traveller Kate on a secluded beach in Caithness, the pair clicked immediately.
They kept in touch, and had their first date, six weeks later, in a bothy on the Black Isle.
They continued Chris’s journey as a pair, and then as a family when they welcomed their son, Magnus, in May last year.
Chris, Kate, Magnus and Jet hope to finish their mammoth journey back in Swansea in the next few weeks, but they’re already planning their next adventure – another trip to Scotland, and probably staying on an uninhabited island.
Challenges
The incredible walk hasn’t been without its challenges. With no money, and very little to eat, things got so bad at one stage that Chris went into hypoglycaemic shock.
Desperate for food, he scavenged bins and ate leftover McDonald’s meals. Luckily, he became good at foraging along the coast, finding shellfish such as whelks, limpets and mussels in abundance.
What got him through was the support and kindness of people he met. Many sponsored him – the current fundraised total is around £280,000 and Chris hopes he’ll reach £300,000 – and some gifted him tents and walking equipment after his own kit broke.
But, he tells me, he doesn’t like to accept hand-outs, and initially found it hard when people brought him “the odd sandwich”.
He even turned down the offer of new walking boots from a stranger after his own ones gave up the ghost, but when snow started to creep in at the seams, and he feared he’d get frostbite, he did, finally, accept them.
“I’d rather starve than ask for help,” he muses. “The first 18 months was so hard. I lost so much weight.
“As time went on, my Facebook page, Chris Walks the UK, started picking up. I never had a GoFundMe – I wasn’t in it for handouts. I really felt guilty if I wasn’t putting something back to charity.
“As I went through Scotland, people were so bloody friendly. Granted, I was probably given more whisky than food! But the generosity of people made this so much easier.”
The barren bits
It was while he was in “the most barren bits” of Scotland that Chris was happiest, and most at peace with himself.
“I’d strip myself back to basic necessities – having some food in my belly, somewhere to pitch my tent, and a source of water, whether a burn or a stream.
“I was just finding myself as I edged my way through the Hebrides and north coast of Scotland, and up to Orkney and Shetland.
“I was happy when I woke up. I had a purpose, I loved the fact I was raising money for charity and the comments that I was inspiring other people. I just found my thing and I haven’t looked back since.”
An all-or-nothing kind of man, Chris added to his adventure, completing the Three Peaks challenge – climbing the mountains of Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis – along the way.
Tough times
Things were extremely tough at times, especially in winter.
“It was physically brutal, especially in the Outer Hebrides, waking up with 70mph winds and hail, knowing I had to get out and find supplies for Jet,” he recalls.
“It took some doing, but I much prefer the physical challenges than the mental ones I faced before this. I’d always remind myself – would you rather be in a tent in the Outer Hebrides, or in a flat in Swansea, depressed?”
In terms of “accommodation”, Chris slept in “anything bar houses” in a bid to raise the profile of homelessness. He himself was homeless but, he reiterates, he “had a purpose”.
“I’ve slept in everything – toilets, an abandoned bus, caves [including Smoo Cave in Durness], beaten-down old tin sheds in the middle of nowhere that were hanging with all sorts of creepy crawlies and God knows what else.
“You have to accept you’re going to get a spider crawling across your face!
“I also spent the night with rats in a wooden hut in the Lake District. It tests you as a person, what you’re capable of, and I get a real buzz out of that. If there was a zombie apocalypse, I think I’d know what I’m doing!”
When it wasn’t possible to find fresh drinking water – which he would always filter – he would distil sea water.
And when it came to keeping clean, Chris wasn’t shy about stripping naked and washing in the sea, burns or rivers.
All walks of life
A privilege, he says, was meeting people from all walks of life, including those who were suffering themselves.
One homeless man in particular, who’d been “a bit naughty”, made a huge impression.
“He’d stolen something and built up in his head that he’d done the worst thing in the world and went into hiding, made himself homeless and wasn’t seeing his kids,” Chris explains.
“We chatted, and he went away to hand himself in, leaving me with a guitar on which he’d written: ‘Thanks for the advice Chris, off to jail!’ He’s seeing his kids again, which is great.”
Midge madness
His time in Skye one sweltering summer was hard-going, with midges and horseflies making a beeline for him.
After meeting a group of campers, he agreed to do the “midge test” – standing naked for one minute while being eaten alive by the bloodthirsty critters!
In Argyll, for his 38th birthday, he staggered into the Oban Inn with just 42p. Sitting with half a cordial, he was tortured by the sight and smell of families gorging on steak and ale pies.
Absolutely starving, he set off to forage whelks, but when a local recognised him and invited him to have a jam on the guitar, his luck turned.
Bar staff gifted him a huge meal and beer galore, and he was able to have a happy birthday (with a hangover to boot!).
Major disaster
Disaster struck, however, on Barra.
A powerful gust of wind caught Jet’s metal bowl, which was fastened to Chris’s bag, hurtling it into the side of his face and cracking a tooth in half.
Unable to seek immediate help, Chris had to deal with it himself. Using a guitar string tied to a rock, he pulled out the bit of tooth piercing his gum.
The pain was so excruciating, he fell to the ground and threw up.
“I tried to continue but an abscess where I’d ripped the tooth out was growing and the pain was insufferable,” he recalls.
He was forced to return to the mainland to seek antibiotics, returning a few days later to explore Coll.
Another low point was “popping” his ankle on seaweed-covered rocks in Islay.
Meeting Kate
Of course, a highlight of Chris’s expedition – and one which doesn’t feature in his book – is meeting Kate, the love of his life near the Whaligoe Steps in Caithness.
“I was camped there and it was quite a rough day,” he said.
“Kate came down, bubbly as anything, but we just had a brief chat because other people were there.
“She went off to find a place to camp and then 40 minutes later, she returned with a bag of fish and chips and two cans of Tennent’s and asked if she could camp next to me.
“We absolutely hit it off.
“She had to leave the next day to go back to work, but six weeks later, we had our first date.
“She was a teacher – she’d worked her way up through uni to get where she was.
“She’d been weaning herself off working so much and focusing more on adventure, so when she heard what I was doing, she decided to put all her eggs into one basket and go for it. It was pretty ballsy!”
The couple got engaged in April last year, had their son Magnus in May, and plan to get married in Bernera in the Outer Hebrides at some stage.
Writing the book
Chris started writing the book a few days after Magnus was born, and completed it in three months.
The foreword is written by Ben Fogle, who became a good friend after meeting Chris near Aberdeen.
“We had this really strong connection, with both of us having stayed on uninhabited islands,” says Chris.
“He’d done Castaway [the 2000 reality show filmed on Taransay that launched his TV career], and I’d stayed on Hildasay for three months.
“There’s not many people you can talk to about that sort of stuff. We really hit it off. ”
Chris stars on Ben’s Channel 5 series New Lives in the Wild, and there’s also a Bafta-nominated documentary about him, The Long Walk Home, available on BBC iPlayer.
Life experience
What has his experience ultimately taught him, I wonder?
“I’ve spent my life going through the same systems as everyone else – that ideology of go to school, go to college, go to uni, save up, get a house, get a wife, get a dog, buy a second property. That never worked for me; I had no interest,” he reflects.
“That caused a lot of my stress because I just felt so alone. I wanted to enjoy the simple things in life, and not worry about being completely loaded.
“There are different ways you can do things. The most important thing is to focus on whatever it is you love.
“I hate the phrase ‘always have a back-up plan’. Why waste your time on a back-up plan? Because then you’re not putting all your energy into what you want to do.
“I’m a big believer that if you really want something enough and you’re prepared to take a few knocks along the way, then you’ll get there.”
- Finding Hildasay, by Chris Lewis, is published by Macmillan priced £16.99. You can donate to his challenge via his page on justgiving.com
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