She successfully completed a five-year around-the-world run, raising £250,000 for a charity that supports orphaned children in Russia[1] and to highlight the importance of early diagnosis of prostate cancer.

[2] Her other achievements include sailing single-handed across the Atlantic in a small boat, and trekking 3,000 miles (4,800 km) alone through Chile on horseback.

Her Swiss mother was suffering from tuberculosis, and her Irish father Major Ronald Peter Griffin was serving in the British Army- Royal Engineers, so she was brought up by the wife of the local postman.

She was two when her mother died, and she went to live with her paternal grandmother, named Carlie Ponsonby, who was bedridden with osteoarthritis, in New Bridge, Askeaton in County Limerick, Ireland.

[8] They sailed 30,000 miles (48,300 km) across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific, stopping at the Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Tonga, before reaching Australia in 1973.

[9] Although both Swale and her husband were able to sail and had prepared as well as they could, the trip had its risks, and it nearly ended in disaster three times: when Rosie fell overboard in the Caribbean 900 miles (1,450 km) from the closest land; again when she needed emergency medical treatment in hospital; and a third time when the whole family suffered food poisoning from a meal of insufficiently cooked beans.

The hardships were survived, however, and the voyage was a significant navigational achievement, using only an old Spitfire compass, nautical charts and a sextant, in the days before GPS.

[8][10] In 1983, Rosie Swale sailed solo across the Atlantic in a small 17-foot (5.2 m) cutter, which she had found in a cowshed in Wales and named Fiesta Girl.

Aiming to become the fourth woman to sail alone to America in a small boat from England (the first being Ann Davison in 1952–1953, followed by Nicolette Milnes-Walker in 1972 and Clare Francis in 1973), she also wanted to raise funds for a CAT Scanner for the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

[11] Divorced from Colin Swale, Rosie also found her second husband, sailor and photographer Clive Pope, during the preparations for the trip, when he rigged the boat for her.

[4] When she was 100 miles (160 km) north of Puerto Rico, she was becalmed for so long she was without food and water for five days and nearly drowned when she was swept overboard in storms.

She arrived at Staten Island, New York, after completing her record-breaking 4,800 miles (7,720 km) in 70 days – navigating by the stars with the aid of her Timex watch.

[16] To mark the millennium, Rosie Swale achieved a long-standing ambition and successfully completed the challenging 'Comrades Marathon', one of the world's oldest and largest ultramarathons, run over a distance of approximately 90 km (56 mi) between the capital of the Kwazulu-Natal Province of South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, and the coastal city of Durban.

[16] Rosie ran the Marathon in Cardiff in 2002, in aid of her local Hospital in West Wales where her husband Clive had died of prostate cancer ten weeks before.

[3] Her aim was to run around the northern hemisphere taking in as much land mass as possible, with no support crew and just minimal supplies and sponsorship.

Rosie started from her home town of Tenby in Wales on her 57th birthday, 2 October 2003, where her first footfall is engraved in a flagstone on her front step.

She also gave cultural talks while on the road, and described how she met a naked man with a gun, how Siberian wolves ran with her for a week, and taking a break to run the Chicago marathon along the way.

[3] Surviving on minimal rations, Rosie fell ill near Lake Baikal in Russia, possibly from a tick bite, and wandered into the path of a bus.

Rosie successfully completed the journey, and despite stress fractures in both legs, which turned the final few miles back to Tenby into a hobble on crutches, she returned to her home on 25 August 2008, at 14:18 local time.

[22] Swale wrote a book about her experiences entitled "Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes", which was released on 28 May 2009.

In September 2009, Rosie Swale Pope ran 236 miles (380 km) along the east coast of Ireland, from Rosslare to the Giant's Causeway, pulling her cart which she named 'Icebird' to highlight the importance of cancer awareness.

Swale-Pope is a patron of PHASE (Practical Help Achieving Self Empowerment) Worldwide, an organisation that works with disadvantaged communities in extremely isolated Himalayan villages in Nepal.

[27] In 1990, Swale presented Channel 4's documentary film Revenge of the Rain Gods, directed by Simon Normanton,[28] about her journey around the Maya World.