Rosie Swale-Pope

Rosie Swale-Pope, MBE (born 2 October 1946) is a British author, adventurer and marathon runner.

She successfully completed a five-year around-the-world run, raising £250,000 for a charity that supports orphaned children in Russia and to highlight the importance of early diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Her other achievements include sailing single-handed across the Atlantic in a small boat, and trekking 3000 mi alone through Chile on horseback.

Rosie Swale-Pope was born Rosie Griffin in Davos, Switzerland.

Her Swiss mother was suffering from tuberculosis, and her Irish father Major Ronald Peter Griffin was serving in the British Army- Royal Engineers, so she was brought up by the wife of the local postman.

She was two when her mother died, and she went to live with her paternal grandmother, named Carlie Ponsonby, who was bedridden with osteoarthritis, in New Bridge, Askeaton in County Limerick, Ireland.

When she was five, her father remarried and moved to Ireland, with his French wife Marriane Griffin.

They had four children, Maude, Greald, Nicholas and Ronnie.

Although they were only in the next cottage, Swale stayed with her grandmother and looked after four orphaned donkeys, seven goats, and a pet cow called Cleopatra.

Swale learnt to ride, often going out on her black horse Columbine all day exploring the countryside.

Her grandmother was very religious and worried that the local school would be a bad influence, so Swale-Pope was schooled at home.

Although her coursework mostly consisted of simply writing about what she had done each day, it proved to be useful training for her later writing about her travels and adventures.

Aiming to become the fourth woman to sail alone to America in a small boat from England (the first being Ann Davison in 1952–1953, followed by Nicolette Milnes-Walker in 1972 and Clare Francis in 1973), she also wanted to raise funds for a CAT Scanner for the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

Divorced from Colin Swale, Rosie also found her second husband, sailor and photographer Clive Pope, during the preparations for the trip, when he rigged the boat for her.

Her father died in 1957, and when she was thirteen, Swale-Pope was sent to a strict boarding school for girls in Cork.

Aged 18, her first job was as a reporter for a regional newspaper, the Surrey Advertiser.

This did not last long; she then hitch-hiked to Delhi, Nepal and Russia, with almost no money or luggage.

Rosie was married to Colin Swale in her early twenties.

They originally lived in a small flat in London, but when their daughter Eve was born, they bought a 30 ft catamaran (named the Anneliese, in memory of Rosie's sister whom she only knew from a photo) and sailed to Italy, where Rosie's son James was born on board the boat.

Beginning in December 1971, Swale sailed around the world from Gibraltar via Australia, with husband Colin and daughter Eve on the Anneliese.

The trip was part-sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper and also by ITN (Independent Television News), which provided them with a camera to record their own news reports of the journey.

They sailed 30000 mi across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific, stopping at the Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Tonga, before reaching Australia in 1973.

They were the first catamaran crew to round Cape Horn.

Although both Swale and her husband were able to sail and had prepared as well as they could, the trip had its risks, and it nearly ended in disaster three times: when Rosie fell overboard in the Caribbean 900 mi from the closest land; again when she needed emergency medical treatment in hospital; and a third time when the whole family suffered food poisoning from a meal of insufficiently cooked beans.

The hardships were survived, however, and the voyage was a significant navigational achievement, using only an old Spitfire compass, nautical charts and a sextant, in the days before GPS.

By the time the family finally returned to Plymouth, Rosie had not only completed her first book, Rosie Darling (often working below decks on her typewriter for up to six hours at a time), but had also written her second book, Children of Cape Horn.

In 1983, Rosie Swale sailed solo across the Atlantic in a small 17 ft cutter, which she had found in a cowshed in Wales and named Fiesta Girl.

Departing from Pembroke in Wales on 13 July 1983, she sailed to the Azores and Caribbean Islands.

Simply equipped, Rosie navigated by the stars and was nearly run down by an oil tanker.

When she was 100 mi north of Puerto Rico, she was becalmed for so long she was without food and water for five days and nearly drowned when she was swept overboard in storms.

She arrived at Staten Island, New York, after completing her record-breaking 4800 mi in 70 days – navigating by the stars with the aid of her Timex watch.

A year after returning from her Atlantic crossing, Rosie decided that she really wanted to see Cape Horn again and decided to plan a trek 3000 mi through Chile on horseback.

The journey took her from the northern port of Antofagasta to Cape Horn, and she rode two Chilean Aculeos horses, named 'Hornero' and 'Jolgorio'.

From the Hacienda Los Lingues, the horses of the Aculeo Stables were originally brought to Chile by the Spanish Conquistadors in 1492.

Leaving Antofagasta on 22 July 1984, Rosie had secured the protection of General César Mendoza, who was the head of Chile's Military Police (and later the leader of the military junta there).

An Olympic horseman, Mendoza provided her with an armed escort for the first stage.

The whole trip was planned to take four months but actually took fourteen.

In the first week of her journey, Rosie was caught in a desert sandstorm that scattered the horses and all her equipment.

Later she fell from one of the horses and broke two ribs.

She also faced starvation when she became lost in the southern rain forests and ran out of food.