Words by Smiley Team
When he was 26 years old, Cliff Andrade found out he had bowel cancer. “The only reason I found out early enough to still be here is because my mum was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer in her early 50s,” he says. “This is unusually young and can point to genetic abnormalities, so I was checked as a precaution and here we are.”
What soon followed were major operations, which left him with extreme IBS, fatigue and faecal urgency – “Basically,” he explains, “I can’t really control when I go for a poo. I need to go a lot, and at short notice. Every single day is a challenge”.
Still, aged 39, Cliff decided to undertake a personal challenge – walking 2000km from John O’Groats to Land’s End, carrying a tent on his back. He set off on 6 June 2021, walked for 77 days, had just nine rest days, and managed to successfully finish in August. In the process, he’s already raised nearly £7.5k (and counting) for three important charities.
[Read more inspirational fundraising stories here]
“It has always been something I thought I’d like to do one day,” says Cliff, speaking about the mammoth walking challenge. “Walking had become increasingly important to me, as I can’t cycle long distances now, and I wanted to get to know the country more. I grew up with foreign parents and felt like I didn’t quite fit in, so it was also sort of filling in some cultural gap.”
After his operations, doctors told him they didn’t know what his future health would look like, as parts of his body were now performing functions for which they weren’t designed – so he wanted to do it while he could.
Cliff wrote a proposal to the Arts Council, who funded him to bring other artists along on the walk. And then it felt really real. He didn’t take months prepare, getting his kit and everything he needed just a four weeks before. And while he intended to do three walks of around 5-10 miles a week beforehand, life got in the way.
Because of his health conditions, he gave himself somewhere to stay once a week, but the rest of the time decided to camp.
So, was it as hard as he expected? “Well, I didn’t get blisters,” he says. “Only one tiny on of my toe that I didn’t even feel. There was always something that hurt, though, even though the pain got less. There was always one thing niggling, like my ankle or knee. The soles of my feet would really start to ache, too.”
Managing his health condition was as difficult as he expected it to be, says Cliff. “Sometimes you learn to adjust to challenges, and I thought this might happen with my condition, but it didn’t. The challenge was constant."
Away from the physical sides of things, Cliff says two important things came out of the walk for him. “One, was a lot of people came out of the past to donate or send messages of support,” he says. “That was so nice, a small way to reconnect with people.
“The second was that I’m quite good at hiding how much my condition affects me day-to-day, and the walk became a way for people to get an understanding of how it actually affects me. It’s changed my relationship with some friends.”
Cliff decided to donate the money to three charities. First, Teenage Cancer Trust – “Mum was stoic about her diagnosis, but felt aggrieved that I, as a young person, had to go through all that. I know she would have wanted to help other young people in the same position.”
The second was Royal Trinity Hospice, who looked after his mum in her final days and helped relieve the burden on their family. And the third was Young Minds – ”Mum struggled her whole life with severe depression. If we can help people deal with these issues in youth, hopefully we can prevent those issues carrying on into adulthood.”
Reflecting on his incredible challenge, Cliff says he feels partly like it was just a dream – like it never happened. “It’s like when you come back from holiday, get back to work, and then feel like you never went,” he says.
“I have two kids, four and eight, and they knew daddy was walking across the country. I bought them a laminated map of the UK, and sticker dots, and every day I would phone them and tell them where I was, so they could stick a dot on the location.
“Getting back and seeing the map with all the dots really hit home and showed me how far I’d come.”
You can still donate to Cliff’s fundraiser on JustGiving here.
