Man and a Pram

Mark Cundy enjoyed what appeared to be an unremarkable family Christmas at his parents' home in Shoebury High Street. Siblings and in-laws gathered round the table, crackers were pulled, presents were opened. Every moment of Christmas at the Cundy home was traditional and to an outsider, unremarkable. Yet for Mark, 41, it was truly an experience to cherish - one he found hard to believe was happening at all. "I see Christmas with new eyes now," he admitted. This happy, if conventional Christmas was in stark contrast to Mark's previous three festive seasons. December 25 2004, for instance, was spent in a cold flophouse with nothing but a bottle of vodka for company, the frozen, dreary, featureless plains of Poland stretching for hundreds of miles around. Essex adventurer Mark, 41, threw over a safe career in management training and set out to walk alone around the world for charity. He had a few thousand pounds in the bank and a wheeled buggy acquired for £10 in a Southend charity shop in which to carry his worldly possessions across the planet. There were times when he faltered, but Santa saved the day for him. The thought of family Christmases kept him going - especially during the final gruelling leg of his trek along the wintry highways of America. "I could have pressed the button at any moment, headed for the nearest airport, and just gone home," he said. "It was the thought of crossing the finishing line at Christmas which gave me the motivation to carry on putting one foot in front of the other." So Mark did indeed keep going, completing the 5,500-mile round-the-world walk on schedule, almost to the hour, on December 18, 2005. That day, he posed for pictures outside Buckingham Palace, his starting and finishing point, before heading for the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square where he drank in the wonder of the festive decorations as if he had never seen such things before. "It was the thought of crossing the finishing line at Christmas which gave me the motivation to carry on putting one foot in front of the other." Worldwalker Mark Cundy His walk completed. Mark says he now appreciates the apparent ordinariness of his family Christmas in another way. And by this time next year, life for him could be very different again. His book, A Man and His Pram Walking the World, is due out on the spring. Meanwhile, life for Mark is unlikely to be conventional again. As he waits for the book to make its impact, Mark has had time over Christmas to reflect. "At first, I just basked in the sheer exhilaration of completing the adventure," he admits. "Then I started to think about how I'd changed as a result of the walk. I've become much more appreciative of things I used to take for granted. "I've now seen places where people have next to nothing, yet they get by. I'll never feel sorry for myself again if I can't afford a new car or a new suit." Mark also remembers the hospitality he was offered. "So often I met strangers on the road who would throw open their doors for me for the night," he says. "Now I'm home, I want to do the same for people like me who are strangers in my country." For some adventurers, the thrill of their exploit simply feeds a hunger for new adventure. Not so with Mark, who reckons he is all walked out. He has now back at work, doing the same job as he did before. "My adventure has made me calmer," he says, "I don't feel the need to look for kicks. I'm just appreciative of home comforts." Yet however unmaterialistic he has become, there is one material object by which he does set high store. Mark keeps this valuable and irreplaceable object carefully hidden and under lock and key - that £10 buggy which accompanied him around the world. Southend Echo --Tom King Southend Echo

One morning, at the start of May 2005, Mark Cundy set out on his daily stroll pushing a pram full of his belongings on a 19 km saunter from the Moscow suburban town of Krasnogorsk to Red Square. By itself, it was a quite a robust workout to be sure. What was far more impressive was that he had walked all the way from London to get there. In fact, the walk from London to Moscow was just the first leg of a world walk , which also saw Cundy saunter from Melbourne to Sydney as the second leg and from the west coast to the east coast of the USA. While the walk was done for the benefit of Cancer Research UK, more than anything Cundy set out on this amazing journey in pursuit of a dream and a sense of achievement. And now he has documented his incredible adventures in the soon to be released book, A Man and a Pram. Starting out with an explanation of what possessed him to go on such a seemingly absurd journey and how he went about planning it, A Man and A Pram goes on to recount Mark s day-to-day life on foot: the obstacles he encountered, the people he met and the places he saw. One can t begin to imagine how the sight of a man in his late 30s, trundling along the world s busiest highways and pushing a pram must have shocked passing motorists. The sheer strangeness of Cundy s venture makes the book a very different sort of travelogue. Of particular interest to Way to Russia readers would be Mark s adventures in Russia. Cundy walked from the border town of Sebezh to Moscow as the final part of the European leg of his trip, and then took that most famous of all train journeys along the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok. Beginning with his trepidation at crossing the border and documenting his time in, and walks between, obscure towns all the way to Moscow, the Russian chapters are perhaps the most entertaining in the whole book. Along the way he encounters all the prototype Russian characters and describes them with humour: The guards on the train were all female and there was absolutely no doubt about the fact that they were in charge. I caught mine on the first morning gazing wistfully out of the window, no doubt reminiscing about her Olympic shot-putting days. Likewise, he experiences the inevitable run-in with the law and perfectly captures the fear that this experience can put into the foreign traveler. Upon dutifully reporting to the police station in Vladivostok for a registration offence, I found the reception area with glass frontage and to the side a small metal desk, reassuringly occupied by a uniformed man holding a semiautomatic rifle. But along with the usual difficulties and peculiarities of travel in Russia, Cundy develops that same respect for (maybe even infatuation with) the people, which is so common among those who venture to the country: The Russians with whom I had direct contact were bluff, lively characters. There was a great energy about them, in the way they walked, talked and indeed how they helped me along the way... Once I had got over my brush with the authorities, I found myself in a land of undoubted harsh conditions but tough natives with good hearts. Filled with countless funny anecdotes and trenchant observations, A Man and a Pram is a great light and entertaining read for any armchair traveler. But, more than anything, A Man and a Pram is a testament to wanderlust that inescapable desire that causes people to abandon reason and stability and head out into unknown lands simply because they feel the need to experience it for themselves. And, more than that, it is an inspiration for those who would love to escape the grind of their daily routine to pursue a dream. --Greg Klemm, Moscow Times

Mark Cundy is a man who decided to walk around the world to raise money for charity, and there, in a nutshell, is the substance of this incredible book. My first impressions when reading about Mark s global exploits concerned the number of uncanny similarities between he and I. He had been a training development manager, as I had once been. He d given up the job to do something infinitely more fulfilling, as had I. Mark hates it when people use the phrase statistically speaking... I use the phrase all the time, much to the annoyance of my colleagues, I m sure. There are other similarities, but more of those presently. If there s a fault with this book it s simply that it is too short. As Mark travels from country to country with all his worldly goods packed into a stroller , he details every walk and ride in his heroic effort to complete his mission. Breakfasts in seedy motels, encounters with the police, chance conversations at dilapidated gas stations...they re all in there. You just wish there was more. Mark - I ve never met him has a heart like a lion. As he trotted the globe and recorded his exploits as he walked literally thousands of miles along deserted highways and byways. And yet and here s the amazing thing he both acts and reacts as if he s taking his pet dog for a walk before Sunday lunch. Never once does he draw perilously close to the edge of insanity, even during the scarier moments. The reader can sense that deep down he just knows that everything will turn out okay in the end. Whilst travelling through Germany he found lodgings in a hotel for the night. It had just closed for the season, but the management simply handed Mark the keys and told him to lock the building up when he left. Somehow you couldn t imagine this happening in Hammersmith. Cundy either has the luck of the Devil with him or the rascally charm of Hugh Grant. Maybe it s both. Almost predictably, Cundy s scariest exploits took place in the good ol US of A, and a chance encounter with a mountain lion was only the beginning. This would be bad enough for the hardiest of travellers, but when you re also suffering from a huge abscess very close to the end of your digestive system that lies below the equator it just seems worse. Mark also had the opportunity to take part in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony, as did I once in Louisiana. His experience was so uncannily similar to mine I could have written the account for him or vice versa. And then there was his run-ins with the constabulary. I had two in the USA myself once for photographing a tree without a license and another time for reading a newspaper whilst standing next to a car. Cundy s encounters were altogether scarier, although thankfully not absolutely terrifying. I could go on for ages, but I won t. Just by the book, but heed my warning; don t start to read it unless you ve got time to finish it in one sitting. This may take a day or two, but you won t be able to put it down. Mark Cundy is the sort of guy who encapsulates everything we want to be but haven t got the bottle to accomplish. You ll just love this page-turner from the outset. --Mike Hallowell, The Shields Gazette