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Philip Hill P


By Ginny Farrell


eaceful Amish, gun-loving Americans, drunken skinheads and angry border guards were just some of the people Philip Hill encountered as he made his way around the world in 65 days.


Following in the footsteps of intrepid traveller


Phileas Fogg, the Kingswear-based sculptor and artist decided he would attempt to traverse the globe in a similarly short period of time. Eschewing the modern advantage of flight, Phil


forged a round-robin route to conquer 33,000 miles either over land or at sea. Traversing countries mainly by train – including


on the Trans Siberian Railway – and the oceans on container ships, Phil ended up having the “most amazing” globe-trotting experience of his life. The 63-year-old seasoned traveller who has


visited more than 120 countries on all seven continents, describes his around-the-world trip in the winter of 2014 the most unusual and hardest of them all – but says he wouldn’t have missed it for the world. “I had read Jules Verne’s book Around the World


in Eighty Days the summer before. I asked myself is that still possible in this day and age?”, he said. “The more I researched it, the more I realised


it probably wasn’t, which might sound strange with the technology we have today. “Hardly any of the


container ships ply the standard trade routes any longer. A ship may go from Hong Kong to Los Angeles once every three weeks, whereas in the days of Phileas Fogg they went every day because they were much smaller and carried less cargo than the mega ships we have now.” Luckily Phil managed to


built walls around myself for the last 20 years. I didn’t let anybody get close and I found it hard to express myself emotionally. “For most of that journey on the ship I


was completely alone. I only saw people at mealtimes but I wasn’t allowed to sit with the crew. “One particular day I suddenly burst into


tears; I cried for an hour and then felt this amazing peace come over me, and it has stayed with me ever since.


“I became emotionally


“There was a point when there were a load of skinheads in the carriage and I thought I was going to get my head kicked in.


open to people, I am open to myself and I experience things in a way I never had before, and I can only put it down to that moment, that hour.”


Like Phileas Fogg, Phil began his journey at the Reform Club in London, travelling on the railway across Europe to Moscow. All was going swimmingly until he reached Belarus just three days into the trip. “I didn’t have a transit


find cargo ships crossing the Pacific and the Atlantic to match his timetable, and hitched a ride. While crossing the Pacific he underwent a “life-


changing” experience that turned his world on its head. Phil explained: “I was a very closed person, I


visa. The crazy thing was they stamped my passport and I got on the train but.


to my horror, ten minutes later four border guards powered into my carriage, took my passport away and cancelled my entry stamp. “They hoicked me off the train and put me in a minibus - it was like something straight


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