A man from Rochdale who has completed a solo trek more than 4,200 miles (6,800km) back to the town on a journey from Azerbaijan has said arriving home again is “pretty surreal”.
Owen Charnley, 34, set off from the Eastern European country’s capital, Baku, at the beginning of April, arriving in Rochdale earlier after 233 days on foot.
He has braved torrential rain, searing heat, and attacks from stray dogs on the trip through 17 countries, where he walked an average of between 35 and 45 kilometres a day to raise funds for two homeless charities in Greater Manchester.
“I’ve been thinking about [coming home] for quite a while, but it is mental that it’s actually here,” he said.
Owen CharnleyThe mammoth challenge was the first stage of his ultimate goal to walk around the world.
During the journey he would stay overnight in different places including hostels and hotels, but he said there was also “lots of camping and sleeping under bridges”.
But it was the kindness shown by strangers towards travellers that really struck him.
“Some of the poorest places that I’ve ever been in my life, have been some of the most generous, especially Bulgaria and North Macedonia,” he said.
“The generosity of people in those kind of countries – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey – was just so amazing. I didn’t take advantage of it as much as I probably could.
“But if I’d have wanted to, I could have just walked through and knocked on random doors, and said ‘hiya, can I stay with you?’
“And nine times out of ten people would go ‘of course, please come in'”
Besides the walking, there were plenty of challenges weather challenges to overcome.
“It got really hot coming through Bulgaria, it got to 42 degrees [Celsius]”, said Mr Charnley.
“It’s pretty hot to just sit down in, but if you’re walking 40 kilometres a day, it means you’ve got to carry about five litres of water a day.
“I got heatstroke a few times.”
‘Hardened up’
Stray dogs were also a “constant worry”, he said after being attacked by them three times during the journey.
Walking between 35 and 45 kilometres on a normal day, Mr Charnley said his feet were “pretty bad” for the first month of the walk.
“The first 500km was all on roads, so that was hard. You’re just using the same part of your foot all day, so you get really bad blisters.
“Then they sort of hardened up and have been fine ever since.”
Mr Charnley trek saw him raise money for Manchester homelessness charities Barnabus and The Booth Centre, a decision made after a chance encounter with a friend from his past.
“When I was at university, I was really good mates with a homeless guy, he used to sit at the end of my street,” said Mr Charnley.
“He loved books and I was doing English Literature, so we used to swap books and chat.
“When I left uni, I didn’t see him again, until about a year ago when I was in a pub in Manchester and I saw him walk past.”
Now a chef doing seasonal work, Mr Charnley said this fleeting moment was what made him choose homelessness as the cause to support.
“It just made me think that over the past 13 years, I’ve done all this stuff, ski seasons etc, and he’s just been living on the streets the entire time!”
He asked those living on the streets in Manchester which charity did “the best work” and said Barnabus and the Booth Centre came up “nine times out of ten”.
Neil Cornthwaite, 50, partnerships manager at Barnabus, said the charity first heard about the challenge in April, after the walk had started and said it had been “fantastic” to watch the journey unfold.
“We’ve had people do all sorts of things for us, but this is unique,” he said.
“We’ve never had anybody do something this big, this length of time and distance. It’s been amazing to follow Owen all the way across Europe.
“It’s a real heart-warming story, to have somebody make a sacrifice of all this time and energy and effort, and then people to support [Owen] in that, so I just want to say thank you.”