The Anglo-Italian Runner
London Marathon · April 22, 2018 · Bib #13730
The Anglo-Italian Runner
I didn’t always run. For a long time I drank and smoked instead.
When I finally stopped, I started moving. Slowly at first, then further, then with purpose. By 2018 I had a reason that made every early morning and every aching mile feel like the least I could do.
Why I run
My wife Sarah had lost her mother Linda to bowel cancer at 53. Her brother Anthony at 34. Her grandfather John too. Three people, the same disease, in the space of a decade. I had watched Sarah carry that — with the kind of quiet strength that doesn’t ask for recognition — and when a ballot place for the London Marathon landed in my hands, I knew immediately what I wanted to do with it.
On April 22 2018 I ran 26.2 miles through London in 4:00:36, wearing a Beating Bowel Cancer vest, carrying Linda and Anthony and John every step of the way. We raised £2,500. The local paper ran the story.
I crossed the finish line in sunshine, fist in the air, bib number 13730. Thirty-six seconds outside four hours. It was one of the best days of my life. I think about those thirty-six seconds constantly. I am told this is normal.
The local paper
Parvalux, the company I worked for, let me stand in their reception in my running kit holding a charity banner and took a photo that I will never throw away.
22.04.2018 · Finisher · 4:00:36
What happened next
I won’t dress it up. I became seriously ill and ended up in the care of the Renal Department at Dorchester County Hospital. The staff there were, in the words I used at the time and still mean entirely, simply amazing.
Recovery was long. Slow. Humbling. For someone who had just run a marathon, learning to be patient with a body that needed time was harder than any training plan.
But I got there. Off the medications, back on my feet, and with a very clear idea of what I wanted to do next. The London Landmarks Half Marathon. For the Dorchester Renal Ward. For the people who gave me back the ability to lace up at all.
I ran it on April 2 2023 — 13.25 miles through the heart of London, camera out at the good bits, grateful at every mile marker. 1:42:43. We raised £1,314 — 202% of the target, from 47 people who wanted to be part of the thank you.
London Landmarks Half Marathon · April 2, 2023 · 1:42:43
Fifty
In 2026 I turned 50. I also left a thirty-year corporate IT career — the kind that comes with 25,000 miles of annual travel, a diary that belongs to everyone else, and a version of yourself you slowly stop recognising.
Nobody quite spells out what fifty actually feels like. The weight that used to shift doesn’t. The knees that were fine have started filing complaints. Recovery after a long run is no longer a good night’s sleep — it’s two days and some considered thought about whether ibuprofen is cheating.
A doctor told me once — I was 45, in hospital, not my finest hour — that the most common patients in his cardiac ward were fifty-year-old marathon runners. Men who’d spent decades pushing hard and never quite learned to listen. I filed that away. I think about it more now.
So this is me, listening. Running at a pace that lets me take photographs. Walking when the view demands it. Getting out in the Dorset hills with people who feel the same way. It turns out that’s not a consolation prize. It might actually be the point.
The ramparts, Ferrara · September 2025
And then Italy
Sarah and I had always talked about Italy. Not as a holiday — as a life. That plan has hit the kind of real-world complications that plans tend to hit. The when is still being worked out. But Italy hasn’t gone anywhere — it’s still where the heart is pointing, still the backdrop to everything this site is built on.
Ferrara came first. In September 2025 we travelled down to Emilia-Romagna. Ferrara is forty minutes from Ravenna, a city of Renaissance walls and bicycles and extraordinary quiet. We laced up and ran the ramparts together on a warm September morning, the trees just beginning to turn.
It was the first time I’d run in Italy with the thought that this might one day be ordinary.
February 2026
In February 2026 we took a trip that felt important. Florence first, then Siena. I was out of the door at quarter past seven in Florence before the tourists arrived, running through empty parks and past a Medici fortress, alone in a city that hadn’t woken up yet.
Two days later I ran out of Siena and into the Tuscan hills, past vineyards and stone arches and a skyline I stopped to photograph because it demanded it.
I wrote it all down. I thought — this should go somewhere. This is where it goes.
Outside Siena · February 12, 2026
Leaving the city limits
The hills beyond · 7:43am
What is this site?
Each post is a run or a walk — route, photos, what I noticed, what was worth stopping for. The photography is deliberate — not illustration for the writing, but a record of the places in their own right.
Some posts are from Italy. Some are from Spain, Switzerland, Croatia, Morocco. Some will be from the South West Coast Path on a Tuesday morning with nobody else around. The thread running through all of it is the same: moving through places, paying attention, writing it down.
I run because I can. And because some people I loved never got the chance to.
Start here
Every route logged, every city photographed. On foot, from the beginning.
All routes →The city that started it
It wasn’t on the itinerary. It was a day trip. We’ve been trying to leave ever since.
Read the story →