A Man and a Pram - The World Walker

One morning, at the start of May 2005, Mark Cundy set out on his daily stroll – pushing a pram full of his belongings on a 19 km saunter from the Moscow suburban town of Krasnogorsk to Red Square. By itself, it was a quite a robust workout to be sure. What was far more impressive was that he had walked all the way from London to get there.

In fact, the walk from London to Moscow was just the first leg of a ‘world walk’, which also saw Cundy saunter from Melbourne to Sydney as the second leg and from the west coast to the east coast of the USA. While the walk was done for the benefit of Cancer Research UK, more than anything Cundy set out on this amazing journey in pursuit of a dream and a sense of achievement. And now he has documented his incredible adventures in the soon to be released book, A Man and a Pram.



Starting out with an explanation of what possessed him to go on such a seemingly absurd journey and how he went about planning it, A Man and A Pram goes on to recount Mark’s day-to-day life on foot: the obstacles he encountered, the people he met and the places he saw. One can’t begin to imagine how the sight of a man in his late 30s, trundling along the world’s busiest highways and pushing a pram must have shocked passing motorists. The sheer strangeness of Cundy’s venture makes the book a very different sort of travelogue.

Of particular interest to Way to Russia readers would be Mark’s adventures in Russia. Cundy walked from the border town of Sebezh to Moscow as the final part of the European leg of his trip, and then took that most famous of all train journeys along the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok. Beginning with his trepidation at crossing the border and documenting his time in, and walks between, obscure towns all the way to Moscow, the Russian chapters are perhaps the most entertaining in the whole book. Along the way he encounters all the prototype Russian characters and describes them with humour:

The guards on the train were all female and there was absolutely no doubt about the fact that they were in charge. I caught mine on the first morning gazing wistfully out of the window, no doubt reminiscing about her Olympic shot-putting days.

Likewise, he experiences the inevitable run-in with the law and perfectly captures the fear that this experience can put into the foreign traveler. Upon dutifully reporting to the police station in Vladivostok for a registration offence, “I found the reception area with glass frontage and to the side a small metal desk, reassuringly occupied by a uniformed man holding a semiautomatic rifle.”



But along with the usual difficulties and peculiarities of travel in Russia, Cundy develops that same respect for (maybe even infatuation with) the people, which is so common among those who venture to the country:

The Russians with whom I had direct contact were bluff, lively characters. There was a great energy about them, in the way they walked, talked and indeed how they helped me along the way… Once I had got over my brush with the authorities, I found myself in a land of undoubted harsh conditions but tough natives with good hearts.

Filled with countless funny anecdotes and trenchant observations, A Man and a Pram is a great light and entertaining read for any armchair traveler. But, more than anything, A Man and a Pram is a testament to wanderlust – that inescapable desire that causes people to abandon reason and stability and head out into unknown lands simply because they feel the need to experience it for themselves. And, more than that, it is an inspiration for those who would love to escape the grind of their daily routine to pursue a dream.

A Man and a Pram is available for pre-order on Amazon.