A grieving landscaper from Essex is set to walk more than 5,000 miles from London to Ghana to fulfil a promise made to his fiancée on her death bed, following her tumultuous battle with cancer last year.
Daniel Forrester, a 48-year-old from Chelmsford, is undertaking the 5,073-mile route following the death of his fiancée Caroline Sarpong in November 2024, to raise money for Saint Francis Hospice in Romford.
Forrester planned to start the walk on 20 September, their proposed wedding day, but pushed this back to 4 November – the anniversary of Sarpong’s admission to the hospice – due to a foot injury sustained at work.
Sarpong, 45, who was born in Hammersmith but moved to Kumasi, Ghana at the age of four, was in the hospice for only seven days before she died.
“I knew that I had to talk to Caroline about what I wanted to do,” Forrester told the Londoners.
“I told her, look, I know you want to go home [to Ghana], and I want to take you home, so I’m going to walk there and raise money for charity.
“She asked me if I’d really do that for her, and I said of course.”
It was at that moment Forrester cemented his idea to trek to Kumasi to spread Sarpong’s ashes, taking him through three European and seven African countries, with deserts, rocky terrain, and fluctuating weather conditions along the way.
The scheduled route starts in Folkestone, where some of Sarpong’s ashes will be spread, before moving through France, specifically to Lourdes, then Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and finally Ghana.
Forrester admitted her death caused periods of depression, stating: “I was in bits and in a really bad place, sobbing away on my sofa.
“She meant everything to me, I’d waited my whole life to meet this woman, this person who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and within two years she was gone.
“I was devastated.”
Forrester described meeting Sarpong as a ‘pivotal moment in my life’, which has ‘completely changed me’.
He added: “I’m not alone doing this, I’m filled with Caroline’s love and I’ve got God’s love as well.
“There’s three of us doing this, even if no-one else helps me.”
The couple had met in January 2023, and ‘hit it off straight away’, however Sarpong’s beauty and kindness masked an underlying struggle with cancer which she had ‘a way of underplaying’.
Sarpong was diagnosed with cancer in March 2021 after she was rushed to hospital with crippling stomach pain – she received ‘emergency life-saving surgery’ and discovered she had cancer in her bowels and liver.
Her consultant told her that she only had six months to live, to which Sarpong told him ‘I’ll beat it and I’ll be your case study’.
This initially proved to be the case after she received her cancer treatment, including a bowel reversal and multiple operations, moving her into remission in January 2022.
Forrester said that when they met a year later, the mother-of-two was in good health, going to the gym regularly, and was one of the most caring, loving and selfless people one could meet.
He said: “For me she was perfect, she was exactly what I had been looking for and we were having a really good time together.
“She was the whole package.”
It was not long after this, however, that a bi-monthly check-up revealed the cancer had re-emerged and was manifesting in Sarpong’s lungs.
Treatment was provided by a US company who had been monitoring her case since her diagnosis in 2021 – as she was the first to receive the medicine in the UK it made her ‘the case study she said she was going to be’.
What was meant to only last three months took Sarpong five months to complete due to the physical stress the medicine was placing on her body – by this point she had admitted to herself, ‘it’s never going away’.
Forrester proposed to Sarpong in mid-January of 2024 while on holiday in Tenerife, providing the pair with a fleeting moment of bliss, however this was cut short after Sarpong began to feel crippling stomach pain and constipation indicating the cancer had returned.
Scans revealed a tumour the size of a satsuma was developing in Sarpong’s brain, causing her to hold the bridge of her nose to hide her pain from her fiancé.
Her battle reached a head when she called Forrester in hysterics saying she could not see because the tumour was crushing the optical nerves in the back of her brain, causing blindness.
Forrester said by this point the radiotherapy had made her weaker than ever, she had dropped 20kg over a 20-month period, and was unable to walk the 10 meters from her downstairs bedroom to the toilet.
By 4 November Sarpong had decided she needed specialist help, and checked into Saint Francis Hospice for symptom management – she passed away just seven days later.
Forrester said: ” She was taken from us to a place where I am confident she is pain free, and safe, and that fills my heart with so much joy and comfort.”
His walk is being monitored by Earth trips, a tour operation company in Chelmsford who are are helping him to plan a safe route to Ghana, as well as providing him with support vehicles and guides along the way.
The journey has gained a lot of traction through promotion on Forrester’s social media accounts and donation pages, with one of his videos going viral on TikTok under the handle caravan.of.love earlier this year.
This also prompted Berghaus, an outdoor wear company, to gift him with essential gear.
Forrester hopes to cover at least 20 to 25 miles daily, adding: “I know there’s going to be a lot of challenges on the way and sometimes I think I’m absolutely crazy.
“But I made a promise to Caroline and I’m determined to make the upmost to make this happen.”
Charlotte Windsor, a leader of the fundraising team at Saint Francis Hospice, said: “It’s going to be such a challenge and we just want to support him as much as we can.
“It’s been amazing how the whole thing has taken off, and we’re so grateful to him.
“For him to honour Caroline in this way is just beautiful.”
You can follow Forrester’s GoFundMe here
Featured image: Daniel Forrester and Caroline Sarpong. Credit: Daniel Forrester
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