Reaching For The Sky

Paul Halford talks to Holly Page about the pursuit of athletic goals at high altitude

- Paul Halford

AT a busy Milan Malpensa airport Holly Page is hobbling on crutches to check in for a flight to Doha. We’ve come from the SkyMasters event at Lake Garda and she is en route to Nepal, where she’ll spend a month, before moving on to Oman and then Patagonia.

This is the life to which Britain’s top skyrunner has become accustomed. She is always on the move and isn’t about to let being on one leg stop her.

Such is the former fell runner’s nomadic spirit that her home is now a campervan, in which she travels around Europe to most of her races. Before buying the van, last year she hitchhiked to many of her events, staying with friends or wherever she decided to pitch her tent.

As I place the bag I’ve been carrying for her on to the conveyor belt, I remark on how heavy it is. “That’s the lightest one,” she says, carrying one on her back which is half her size and one other. She turns down the offer to be wheelchaired through to the gate. She can manage.

After all, her sport is clearing obstacles such as mountains thousands of metres high – ascending 1000m in the space of a couple of kilometres distance, scrambling over rocks, climbing vertical sections, scaling glaciers with crampons, negotiating narrow ridges and hurling yourself down technical descents - all at speed. Travelling halfway round the world with several heavy bags while on crutches seems like nothing in comparison.

As well as freelance translation and subtitling work, Page primarily works on international development programmes. A change of contract at the beginning of 2018 meant she was able to work from anywhere, giving her more flexibility to pursue her globetrotting skyrunning dreams.