Having battled Power 5 winds and dramatic storms, ascended huge hills on a skateboard, and camped out solo, Becky Gilmour is not any stranger to extreme adventures. And all whereas carrying a 15kg pack, together with her own tent and provides, plus the occasional tin of paint.
Gilmour describes herself as an journey athlete and psychological well being advocate, and final 12 months she turned the primary individual to skateboard the world’s longest coastal route, the Wild Atlantic Way, which runs a colossal 2,500km alongside the west coast of Ireland.
“It’s a bit loopy seeing a lady on a skateboard with a backpack, in the midst of nowhere. Individuals would cease me and ask what on earth I used to be doing,” she remembers.
The 26-year-old has since amassed an viewers of greater than 30K followers on Instagram, the place she speaks candidly about her psychological well being. However a couple of years in the past, adventures like this had been the very last thing on her thoughts.
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Gilmour had misplaced an in depth buddy to suicide. “I actually struggled to navigate that grief,” she remembers. She explains that it felt magnified by not having the ability to attend the buddy’s funeral because it was in lockdown.
Once I communicate to Gilmour on the cellphone she is in the midst of her second formidable problem in a 12 months – paddleboarding a staggering 1,000km (621 miles) solo throughout the width of Eire.
“Ultimately I reached a degree the place I wanted to do one thing for myself and [my mental health],” Gilmour says, reflecting on the time after shedding her buddy.
Gilmour is from Banbridge, Northern Eire, and says that the loss had introduced up recollections of the pair skateboarding collectively as youngsters round Portrush. These recollections, mixed with the necessity to discover a method to deal with her grief, kickstarted Gilmour’s plan to finish the skateboarding problem alongside the Wild Atlantic Means.
Stretching 2,500km (1,554 miles) alongside Eire’s western shoreline, the route runs from the unspoilt area of the Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal within the north of Eire, proper all the way down to the harbour city of Kinsale in County Cork within the south. The full cumulative elevation acquire is sort of 3 times the peak of Mount Everest.
Regardless of solely having a number of years of skating expertise, and never having finished it in any respect the 12 months previous to the problem – having suffered a foul accident that left her with a concussion – Gilmour wasn’t intimidated.
Setting herself a problem was nothing new – journey and journey has been a thread by way of Gilmour’s life on and off since she was 18. She’s traversed the width of Kenya twice utilizing public transport, slept in Egypt’s White Desert with out a tent, hitchhiked the size of New Zealand twice, and travelled extensively by way of Uganda. “I like a problem, however I by no means discovered it very fulfilling earlier than. Understanding I’m serving to different folks indirectly offers me plenty of objective,” she explains.
So this time when hitting the highway, Gilmour determined to fundraise for the suicide-prevention charity Samaritans and raised £15,000 through a JustGiving page. “Each £10 raised is one probably life-saving cellphone name funded for the Samaritans,” she says.
Beginning the problem in June final 12 months, Gilmour hoped it could take between 4 and 6 months. However what she hadn’t totally anticipated was Eire’s climate. “There have been round 10 days the place my hair simply did not dry,” she laughs. “I used to be skating in storms and sleeping by way of storms. As soon as all of your gear is moist, it is actually troublesome to get dry. It was so powerful,” she says.
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Carrying 15kg on her again, carrying a hi-vis jacket and a inexperienced helmet lined in stickers together with her wavy brown hair poking out, Gilmour lined between 20km and 60km (12.4 to 37 miles) a day all through the problem, which ended up taking six and a half months.
“I knew it could be hilly; I signed up for that,” she says. But she ramped up the problem by including among the coastal islands off the path to her journey, which she both reached through ferry or by hiring a paddleboard. And regardless of “insane hills and elevation”, Gilmour refused to stroll, as she knew: “if I walked one hill, I might stroll all of them.”
The downhills proved trickier; when the roads had been moist (as they usually had been), stopping turned practically not possible. “At first, I used to be skating at 4am when the roads had been empty and bombing hills. I might examine Strava and attempt to beat my pace daily.” Then got here the inevitable crash. “I completely stacked it on a mountain,” she says. This was a turning level – she realised that if she wasn’t extra accountable, she would not make it to the top of the problem.
But essentially the most memorable elements of the journey weren’t marked by accidents, kilometres or speeds; it was the folks she met alongside the way in which, who made her really feel like she wasn’t doing this problem alone. “It is onerous to say it was unsupported, as a result of I bought a lot assist from strangers,” she says.
One girl pulled over to talk to Gilmour and provided to take her bag to the following city, after recognising her from information protection when native papers had began choosing up her story. Information travels quick in Eire, Gilmour tells me.
“She had tears in her eyes. I simply knew we associated to one another when it got here to suicide loss,” Gilmour remembers.
That second modified her understanding of what the journey had turn out to be. “I realised the journey had been so therapeutic for me. It was meant to turn out to be about group and asking for assist and getting different folks concerned.”
Typically folks can be ready for her arrival, spurring her on, giving her meals and providing a heat mattress, which was most useful throughout winter when Gilmour had a extreme chest an infection.
Gilmour’s method of giving again was to color murals in every county she visited, as her former profession was as a mural artist. She carried paintbrushes, purchased paint tins the place she might (and generally needed to carry them together with her, including extra weight), although dangerous climate put a cease to her portray plans throughout winter.
The expertise additionally remodeled how she noticed Eire. Gilmour fell in love with it once more, blown away by the great thing about locations she beforehand knew little about. She needs to return to Lough Hyne in County Cork to snorkel, for instance. The marine nature reserve is legendary for its biodiversity, and after she skated as much as it, a person requested if she’d introduced goggles. “Once I mentioned ‘no’, he advised me I might wasted my journey,” she laughs.
Gilmour completed the problem in mid-December 2025. “It was such an enormous factor bodily and emotionally,” she says. However quickly she discovered herself prepared for extra, and one other concept emerged.
Her subsequent problem noticed her paddle throughout Eire to raise money for a psychiatric hospital in Uganda whose providers have been devastated by funding cuts, shrinking a group of 17 to simply two nurses, with a affected person checklist of 1,200 folks. Her days had been spent paddling between 20km and 50km (12.4 to 31 miles), and on someday, going into Dublin, she carried her board and package by way of 13 locks in a single day. “My hips are lined in bruises,” she says.
These challenges could seem daunting, however Gilmour is stuffed with positivity, and is eager to emphasize to her social media viewers that journey is not reserved for elite athletes or folks with massive budgets. For her, “motion has all the time been an enormous coping mechanism”.
What began as a strategy to cope has affirmed her perception within the kindness of strangers, human connection and the significance of group. And whereas the fundraising issues, so too does her message that “the outside has an enormous half to play in psychological well being”.
“It teaches you to be aware and current,” she says.
If you’re experiencing emotions of misery, or are struggling to manage, you may communicate to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI) or go to the Samaritans web site to search out particulars of your nearest department.
You possibly can donate to Becky Gilmour’s JustGiving web page here.
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