After leaving home and school at 16, she raised the necessary sponsorship to enable her to walk from
John o' Groats to
Lands End. Walking 20 to 25 miles a day six days a week, she completed the journey in 49 days and was the youngest person at that time to have done it. Through sponsorship of the London
Evening Standard, she raised £25,000 for the
Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital. At 18, she set off from
New York City crossing the
United States towards
Los Angeles. The media schedule to coincide with the sponsors' public relations events en route was demanding, requiring hours of interviews at the end of each long day. At 21 she walked across Australia, 50 miles a day for 3,200 miles from
Sydney to
Perth in 95 days, beating the men's record for this journey. She suffered severe
sunburn,
dehydration as well as intense blistering of the feet but was determined not to miss out any miles. She wrote about this journey in her book
Feet of Clay. On 2 April 1991, she left
Cape Town,
South Africa and walked the length of Africa covering over before arriving in
Tangiers,
Morocco two years later on 1 September 1993. She had been joined by her former boyfriend, British survival expert
Ray Mears, for five months during the journey through Zaire after an uprising had forced her and her team to abandon the support vehicle and be evacuated by the
French Foreign Legion along with all the other expats. She was able to return to central Africa within weeks of the evacuation and continued walking from the place she had left. During the stretch across the Sahara, she walked an extra 4,000 km around a war zone to avoid missing out any steps. She reached Tangiers and was greeted by the international media. The walk raised awareness of
Survival International, an organisation which helps protect the lives of threatened tribal people. She wrote about this journey in her book
On Foot through Africa. In April 1994, she left
Algeciras,
Spain and walked through Europe on the Via de la Plata through Spain, through France, crossing to Britain at
Dover. She then completed the last walking from Dover back to John o' Groats accompanied by young people from
Raleigh International who came to find out just how far they could walk if they really put their minds to it. She arrived at John O'Groat's, the world's end, on 14 October 1994. She was shadowed by a
BBC film crew and presenter
Janet Street-Porter. At the time, Campbell was hailed as the first woman to walk around the world. Campbell raised half the amount for charity in one go when one of the organisers at Raleigh International sold the advertising space on her forehead during her well-publicised return. After a period in hospital for a back operation, she walked across America again for her own personal satisfaction as she had had to miss out a section in the middle due to illness. She wrote about that journey in her final book,
The Whole Story.
Controversy While crossing the United States in 1985 at the age of 18, she became too ill to walk but, concerned that her sponsors would withdraw their backing, she reluctantly accepted lifts in her back-up vehicle to keep to their schedule. Neither Campbell, nor Brian Noel, her support driver, know how many times this happened between Indianapolis, Indiana and Fort Sumner, New Mexico, a distance of some 1,000 miles. Brian Noel did not recall it happening at all when interviewed by the Daily Mail after Campbell wrote a book about this episode also detailing the second walk she'd made across the USA to cover that stretch, plus another 1,500 miles to Los Angeles. ==Hunter-gatherer==