Est. February 2026 · Dorset
Running · Photography · Europe
Volume I · 81 routes logged
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
Dorchester County Hospital · May 25, 2023 · £1,363 to the Renal Unit
What kept happening
The 2023 run was the thank you. I meant every mile of it. But the renal department and I weren’t done with each other.
The kidneys have relapsed four times now. I have been in and out of the system more than I would like to admit to — more, if I’m honest, than I told most people at the time. There’s something about being a man of a certain age with a body that keeps malfunctioning that makes you want to keep it quiet, carry on, not make a fuss. I left it longer than I should have on more than one occasion. I ended up hospitalised for it. You’d think I’d have learned.
Last week was the most recent. Still recovering now, writing this from the other side of a Rituximab infusion — which is, as treatments go, a serious piece of kit. A long day in a hospital chair while something considerably more powerful than willpower gets to work on the problem. The hope — and the doctors are genuinely hopeful — is that this one fixes it properly. Not manages it. Fixes it. That word matters.
When you’re lying still and you can’t run and there’s not much else to do, you think. You think about what you’ve been putting off, what you’ve been avoiding saying, what you would do differently if things had gone the other way. I’ve had a lot of that kind of thinking recently. Some of it has been uncomfortable. Most of it has been useful.
The thing I keep coming back to: I waited too long. Every time. Too long to go to the doctor, too long to say something wasn’t right, too long to ask for help. And I am not the only man I know who does this.
And then Italy
Sarah and I had always talked about Italy. Not just as a holiday destination — as somewhere that felt worth understanding properly.
Ferrara came first. In September 2025 we travelled down to Emilia-Romagna and gave it a proper look. 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.
Running in Italy does something to you. The pace of the place, the light, the way the cities hold their history without making a fuss of it. It felt like somewhere worth coming back to. So we did.
February 2026
In February 2026 we went back to Tuscany. 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
The pivot
We had built a whole life around Italy. Not vaguely — properly. Business plan, timelines, a brand. Ravenna was the city. We’d walked it, run in it, talked about it on the train home. It felt like the answer.
Then the visa came back. The route that works for both of us requires two years in Italy alone first. Two years apart. That was never the point. So we stayed in Dorset.
Italy hasn’t disappeared. But it’s no longer the plan. And the longer we’ve stayed, the more it’s become clear that the story we thought we had to go and find — it was already here. The coastline, the chalk, the hills above the town. All of it waiting.
Thinking Out Loud Runners
John Foote — lifelong friend, naturally fit in the way that makes you mildly resentful — came in at the right moment and made it a real thing rather than a very long email thread. In June 2026 we ran our first official outing: the Coombe Keynes 10k on the Lulworth Castle estate. Both of us finished. Talking the whole way. That’s exactly the point.
It’s not early days any more. It’s happening. And it means more now than it did when we first thought of it.
First TOL Run · Combe Keynes 10k · June 14, 2026
Coming soon
A running challenge. France, 2028. The kind of distance that sounds insane until it doesn’t, and then sounds insane again when you think about it properly. It matters — to us, and to the people it’s raising money for.
More soon. But it’s happening.
What is this site?
Each post is a run — 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.
The routes are in Italy and Spain and Croatia and Switzerland and a few miles from where I live in Dorset. They’re all part of the same thing: the attempt to stay curious, stay moving, and keep paying attention — through the good years and the harder ones alike.
I run because I can. And because some people I loved never got the chance to.
Start here
Every route logged, every city photographed. Europe on foot, from the beginning.
All routes →The group
A running and walking group built around the 50+ experience — but genuinely open to anyone who gets it. Dorset-based. No pace requirement. Just miles and conversation.
More details →