E book of the week 

Discovering Hildasay by Christian Lewis (Macmillan £16.99, 352pp) 

Within the spring of 2017, Christian Lewis stood on prime of Swansea’s Rhossili cliffs trying down on the fiercest waves he’d ever seen. ‘I can positively surf,’ he says. ‘However I’m no skilled.

‘On some other day my regular sense of worry would have made me stroll away.’ However on that day, the previous paratrooper ‘simply didn’t appear to care’.

After ten years struggling to lift his daughter Caitlin (then 16) alone, she had determined to maneuver out. The debt collectors had been circling and Lewis was on the point of eviction.

‘I felt an immense sense of calm, or was it abandon?’ he writes, as he hooked up the leash of his surfboard to his ankle and headed out to face ‘the monster’.

Though he says he ‘wasn’t suicidal’, he was conscious of ‘not eager to exist any extra’ as he headed out in direction of the break. ‘Then, behind me, thundering out of nowhere, got here the killer wave. I turned myself and my board to face the oncoming slaughter, to present myself half an opportunity to dive beneath it.’ However because the muscular wall of water hurtled in direction of him, Lewis realised he was outmatched.

‘The white water hit me so laborious my board was instantly ripped from my physique. My legs and arms had been being dragged each which approach and felt as in the event that they had been being pulled out of their sockets. One second it was gentle and the following it was darkish. I had no thought if I used to be the wrong way up or going through upright.’

Someway Lewis scrambled again onto his board. It took each fibre of his being to experience the following wave — ‘the longest and most lovely of my life’ — again to the shore the place he kissed the Welsh sand. ‘It was the primary battle in a very long time the place I had triumphed,’ he recollects.

He’d struggled with the practicalities of civilian life ever since leaving the Military, and for the primary time in too lengthy he was ‘blissful and grateful to be alive’. Having felt the pure pleasure of survival, Lewis determined to proceed pitting himself towards the British coast. As he’d been supported by forces charity SSAFA up to now, he resolved to stroll the complete perimeter of the UK to lift funds for the organisation.

His journey started chaotically. He acquired a tent (with a gap within the prime) from one other ex-para and a few (outsized) boots from his brother. Different associates donated a sleeping bag, tenting range and a Crocodile Dundee-sized knife (of the kind you wouldn’t need to be caught with). Then he obtained drunk and torched all traces of his previous life: beginning certificates, passport, driving licence. All went onto a hearth in his again backyard.

The subsequent day, his mum and stepdad drove him to Llangennith seashore within the Gower, close to his Swansea house, and waved him off. After they left, Lewis realised he hadn’t even determined whether or not to move north or south. ‘The one plan I had was to maintain shifting ahead,’ he realised, and headed north with £10 in his pocket.

He rapidly realised what he was up towards. Starvation kicked in, decreasing him to ‘a skeleton coated in pores and skin’, as he rummaged via bins for meals. He discovered it laborious to search out protected locations to camp close to cities. As wild tenting is prohibited in England and Wales, he needed to pitch his tent secretively — as soon as in the course of a roundabout.

His garments started to stink. ‘Once I had a couple of quid to spare I’d stroll right into a laundrette to clean up my garments,’ he says. He’d don his military poncho and strip off beneath it, sitting silently ‘whereas the previous women chatted away, itching to ask what I used to be doing!’

In cities, Lewis discovered himself befriending members of the homeless neighborhood, a lot of whom had been additionally former veterans. Their plight hit him laborious. Heading to the Lake District, his temper was lifted by the surroundings.

However by the point he reached Scotland, the times had been drawing in and a frozen shoreline stretched forward. At evening, temperatures plummeted and he couldn’t discover sufficient dry driftwood to make fires. The chilly made the ache in his fingers and ft ‘insufferable’.

Then, crossing over to the Northern Irish coast, Lewis discovered a companion to heat each his physique and soul. Jet is a wonderful white lurcher whose homeowners had been struggling to maintain her. ‘I appeared into her sensible eyes,’ recollects Lewis, ‘and wrapped my arms round her whereas she stood nonetheless. I had acquired the perfect good friend I might ever have.’ From then on, Jet walked beside Lewis by day and slept at his ft by evening.

Again in Scotland, as spring turned to summer time, Lewis was bitten uncooked by midges and cleggs (horseflies). On Skye, Jet ripped the tent together with her claws, giving the bugs free entry to all of them evening.

However, within the absence of outlets alongside the wilder shoreline, he discovered to forage for shellfish. Supporters of his Fb fundraising web page donated higher gear to assist him survive the icy climate and introduced common meals.

Lewis had scary moments, like when he twisted an ankle (and needed to drag himself miles to security), and when a gale blew a steel pan into his face, shattering a tooth (which he extracted himself utilizing a guitar string).

On the tip of Mull, the terrain of freshly logged pine was unattainable for Jet to navigate and Lewis was pressured to hold her till he vomited with exhaustion.

His lonely days had been often balanced by evenings in native properties and pubs, the place kindly Scots purchased him meals and drinks and even obtained him dancing to conventional music. By the point he reached Jura his journey was making the nationwide information and he’d raised nearly £50,000 for SSAFA.

Lewis had walked 12,000 miles to Shetland by the point Covid struck. He spent the primary lockdown in a former shepherd’s hut (with no working water, heating or electrical energy) on the 104-hectare island of Hildasay, off the west coast of the Shetland mainland.

There he discovered to catch lobster and helped a farmer out by caring for the sheep. He bathed within the sea and sooner or later noticed a soccer floating in direction of the shore. Considering of Tom Hanks’s obsession with a volleyball within the film Castaway, Lewis waded out to gather it. He drew a face onto it, added a driftwood physique and a scallop shell bra and referred to as her Hilda.

Lewis’s ebook (and his journey) ends there for now. As a result of again on the mainland he met a fellow walker referred to as Kate and the pair turned engaged. They now have a younger son named Magnus.

However Lewis (who has thus far raised £270,000 for SSAFA) guarantees that, as quickly as Magnus is sufficiently old, they may all proceed on collectively. His journey has taught him ‘how little I wanted in the way in which of fabric possessions and residential comforts to get up blissful’.

And he credit the brutality and great thing about the Scottish panorama and the heat of the individuals with serving to remodel his life. ‘I got here to Scotland slightly damaged and I’m going to go away right here not simply unbroken, however with a canine and girlfriend.

‘What I’ve actually discovered from this journey is that house may be in many alternative locations and exist in many alternative kinds.’