A landscaper is to walk 5,000 miles from Romford to Ghana as a way to ensure his late fiancee’s “memory lives on” after she died from cancer.
Daniel Forrester, 47, from Chelmsford and his partner Caroline Sarpong were together for nearly two years and engaged for 11 months before she died on November 11 last year.
Ms Sarpong, who was previously married before meeting Mr Forrester, lived with colorectal cancer, which spread to her liver, lymph nodes and lungs, and was later diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour.
Mr Forrester will honour his fiancee by walking with her ashes from Saint Francis Hospice in Havering-atte-Bower in Romford, where she received end-of-life care, to her home town of Kumasi in Ghana, the area she lived between the ages of four and 19 before returning to London, where she was born.
He is expected to complete his walk in six to 12 months, which will start on September 20 – the day the couple planned to get married, all while raising money for the hospice.
“I wanted to do something for Caroline. I wanted her memory to live on,” he told the PA news agency.
“I just wanted to show to everyone, even after her passing, what a beautiful, wonderful woman she was.”
In 2021, Ms Sarpong went to the hospital after complaining of stomach pains but was forced to have emergency surgery on her bowel after it ruptured and, at the time, doctors gave her six months to live.
She underwent chemotherapy before going into remission in January 2022, and a year later, she met Mr Forrester.
He described his late fiancee as his “angel” who “completed” him.
“She was just so selfless and caring. She literally put everyone first,” he said.
“I can’t do her justice by telling you what she was like. It’s so hard to describe her, but for me, she’s my angel.
“I’ve never met anybody in my life who’s been more influential in me becoming a better person.”
Mr Forrester will walk from Romford to Canterbury, and in between take a boat from Barking Riverside to Woolwich – a route the couple would take often for date nights – before heading to Dover to take a ferry to Calais and walk south to Lourdes in France.
Afterwards, he will trek through Spain to Gibraltar before taking a ferry to Morocco, where he will walk across the Western Sahara, to Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea and the Ivory Coast before reaching Kumasi in Ghana.
He said he expects to take 72 days to walk from Romford to Gibraltar and hopes to arrive there on December 2 to mark the one-year anniversary of Ms Sarpong’s funeral, and said taking on this challenge helped him to grieve for her.
“After her funeral, I was at rock bottom. I couldn’t think of anything to motivate me to even open the curtains,” he said.
“I ordered a book online about someone who walked from London to Rome… within 10 pages, I decided to go for a walk.”
His first walk after Ms Sarpong’s funeral was the day before Christmas Eve last year, from his home in Chelmsford to her home in Barking, where he dropped off presents for her family and collected her ashes to bring home.
Mr Forrester said he did not want to set a fundraising target on his GoFundMe page, but selected an arbitrary goal of £1 billion in a bid to raise “as much money as possible” for the hospice, which provided “exemplary” care for Ms Sarpong.
“The level of care for Caroline was really out of this world, nothing was too much trouble for them as they attempted to make Caroline’s final days as comfortable and as dignified as they possibly could,” he said.
“I myself will never forget that, and I take great comfort in knowing Caroline went peacefully and comfortably, whilst under their care at Saint Francis.”
To support Mr Forrester’s fundraiser, you can visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/london-to-ghana-5k-mile-walk.
