Sunshine a low priority on Wade's island of dreams

That England's footballers were simultaneously losing to Northern Ireland may be regarded as coincidental.

Though aware of the Highlands' self-harm problem, and of the anxious efforts to tackle it, Kirsty Wade was happy to stay at home on her island of dreams.

Twenty years ago she was Britain's top woman middle distance runner: triple Commonwealth gold medallist, Olympian, multiple record breaker and world traveller - every which way, but Lewis?

"There's never been a morning when I've not been grateful to wake up here," she says. "If nowhere is perfect, then this comes very close."

Still just 43, she lives with her husband, three children and two dogs on the midge swatting, bible bashing, wind cheating, Gaelic rooted shores of Uig, just about as far as the Outer Hebrides can stretch.

The family home, said in a recent poll to command one of the best views in Britain, is at the end of a 20 mile, single track road dotted with long abandoned houses. There are more sheep than people; more cairns than bairns. "Even by Hebridean standards," concedes one of the guide books, "Uig is remote."

It's a part of the Atlantic coast which in January was devastated by a killer hurricane, where in winter it's dark at three o'clock, where the Wades' elder daughter must catch the school bus at 7.30am and where friendly locals chirp "Lovely morning" - and mean it - if the wind falls below force five and the mercury rises above 55 degrees, old money.

"I'm aware that most of the rest of Britain has had an exceptionally sunny summer and' we've hardly seen the sun at all," she concedes. "You don't come to Lewis for the sunshine, you come for the light. The sky is awesome."

The former co-owner of the Sub-Two fitness centre at Rowlands Gill, near Gateshead, hasn't the remotest regret either - a woman ineluctably, ecstatically enwrapped in the tangle o' the isles.

"The last two years in Rowlands Gill, our car was broken into six times. They even took all the Christmas presents. Our house was burgled, our garage broken into twice.

"We loved our house and our friends in Rowlands Gill, but wondered if it was really the best environment in which to be bringing up the children.

"I was pregnant, we had a bridging loan and for a naturally cautious person like me, it was outrageous - but now the children can run down to the sea, have races between bits of seaweed on the beach, roam to their hearts' content. We have a lovely house, a bit of land and no crime at all. We know how lucky we are."

They arrived six-and-a-half years ago, having spent the winter of 1997-98 looking after a nearby hotel for a friend. It was the right way round. "Once you've spent a winter here you don't want to go back," she says.

Kirsty's world athletics standing was little realised until one of the children's friends spotted her name in the Guinness Book. "It must have been a pretty old one," she insists.

Rachel, 15, has never seen her mum's Commonwealth gold medals - 800m in Brisbane in 1982, 800m and 1500m in Edinburgh four years later. "I gave Brisbane to my mum, the others are in a state of disrepair on top of the wardrobe," she says, adding almost as an afterthought that she'd supposed Brisbane would be the last drug-free major championships in which she would compete.

"There were a lot of eastern Europeans about...."

Kirsty McDermott was born in Girvan, Scotland, her father part Irish. When she was three, the family moved to Wales. "I'm a bit of a mongrel," she says, "round here everyone assumes I'm English, anyway."

Proud to fly the red dragon, she won her first Welsh senior vest at 16 while still on a scholarship at Millfield School in Somerset, where former Somerset cricketer and Darlington St Mary's Grammar School old boy Colin Atkinson was headmaster.

"I quite liked him, he was rather cool," she recalls.

Though she imagined a career in nursing, like most of the rest of the family, she read English literature at Loughborough University, where she met Whitley Bay lad and fellow runner Tony Wade, who became both her husband and her coach.

They moved to Whitley Bay, married in Barbados, the residency qualification three days. Training tirelessly and dieting determinedly - some said dangerously, on a vegetarian regime high in nuts - Kirsty spent two years on the dole in an attempt to reach peak performance. Tony did several part time jobs.

Shattered not to be chosen for the 1984 Olympics, she seriously contemplated giving it all up. "We had no money, my parents thought we should get proper jobs - they never said it, love them - and Tony was having to do things like working in a toothbrush factory.

"We'd done all the right things, but it just wasn't working out. It was Tony who persuaded me to carry on. He said he'd been mediocre at almost everything, but made the most of his talents. That's what he thought I should do."

Though rarely able to catch American marvel miler Mary Decker or the Czech 800m world champion Jarmila Kratochvilova, she held the British 800m record for ten years, was the only British woman winner in the 1985 European Cup and was sixth the same year in the world championships in Tokyo.

A terrific career? "Well OK," says Kirsty. "I had a lot of injuries and trouble with asthma in the last few years. I never made an Olympic final and I never broke four minutes for 1500m." She failed by four tenths of a second.

Helped by the money from her prize money trust fund, she and Tony ran Sub-Two for 13 years until 1998, knocked the business and half of the Derwent Valley into shape, got out while they were on top.

"We were having to get more staff in when I was away competing, and then someone to look after the children. We just weren't seeing enough of them. I wasn't very happy about going away, I'm a homely sort of person. Here we're a family again."

Spectacularly situated, the Wades' large bungalow lies in an area rich in plant and bird life, where settlements can be traced to the Iron Age. They also offer bed and breakfast - "Family, dog and dirty boy friendly," says the website - but seek 24 hours notice for dinner since Stornoway Co-op is 36 winding miles away.

That sea fret and rain can swiftly roll in is never better illustrated in the 15 minutes between contemplating a scenic photograph and taking it.

"Damn, mist again," as amateur photographers and England footballers might homophonically, have observed, though she remains a picture of contentment, nonetheless.

The former Blaydon Harrier now works part-time as an assistant at the nearby primary school and for a day each week on exercise referral from the local GP. Tony manages Stornoway leisure centre - the track, unsurprisingly, is all-weather - but is on a three year Scottish Executive secondment to improve the level of physical activity among children in the Western Isles.

The poor chap may have his work cut out. A report in the following day's Scotsman noted that nearly 90 per cent of Scottish children would rather watch DVDs or listen to music in their spare time. Only 14 per cent of those surveyed wanted to do more sport; more than a quarter wanted to "go clubbing."

Tony was in Glasgow, Rachel good naturedly joshing that the journalistic visit has come between her and her tea. Megan, six next week, reckons she'll be an even better athlete than her mum.

How much better? She spreads wide her arms. "Miles."

Kirsty misses the Derwent Walk and Chopwell Woods, where she trained, the camaraderie and the folk of the fitness centre, the familiarity of the North-East road s running circuit. She least misses, she says, the crowded roads and the bank holiday queues at the MetroCentre.

"I accept that coming here isn't for everyone. One of the major things you have to recognise is that you are coming into a community which has its own cultural traditions, which you mightn't always understand but have to acknowledge.

"People might think that this is quite insular but in fact there is a wonderful camaraderie, a sort of self-preservation society against the elements.

"It's almost a contradiction, but you have to be sociable, especially if you have children."

She still trains - "not very hard and not very often, usually just because I get such pathetic looks off the dogs" - promised herself she'd tackle a marathon before 30, has passed 40 and wonders if 50 might do.

Last in the Stornoway Gazette? "Probably in the list of helpers at Uig field day." Last in The Times? "Probably the Tokyo world championships."

Though she won't rule out the possibility of some day migrating back to the south, she has never once contemplated it. Out on the edge - amid the harebells and the frog orchid, the shell ducks, the herons and the ringed plovers - life's pressures and stresses seem suitably far removed.

Middle distance, foreseeable future, Kirsty Wade has stopped running.

Bactrack Briefs

At the other end of Scotland, the Marriot Hotel in Glasgow, our old friend Brooks Mileson was picking up the country's Sports Personality of the Year award on Friday night - the first time it's been won by an Englishman.

"For the only time in my life I was speechless," said Brooks, philanthropist extraordinary and chairman of the Durham based Arngrove Group, after collecting the trophy from Scotland's first minister Jack McConnell.

Chairman of Gretna FC and benefactor to many, the Sunderland born former cross country international has also funded orphanages in Romania and an animal rescue sanctuary in Cumbria and leads the fight against racism in Scottish football.

"Our first black player got terrible abuse. I went absolutely berserk," he says.

Gretna is also the only professional club in Britain which offer free coaching in schools - 14,000 youngsters took advantage last season - and runs its academy in partnership with the University of Lancashire.

"Clubs take on kids at 14 or 15, keep them for three years and then abandon them on the streets, it's immoral," says Brooks. "If our lads don't make it in football, then they can drop into the university system."

His weekend was completed with victory at promotion rivals Morton, rumoured to be in line for a take over from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey. One of the television people asked Brooks what qualities Ramsey would need.

"A lobotomy," he said. "I'm on my third already."

ends

Before heading for the Hebrides, the column recorded its annual visit to Chester-le-Street Riverside. It was meant to be light hearted, a chance to discover what Critics' Corner had to grumble about in a double promotion season.

We also noted at least three "misanthropic" official complaints about the "innocent" chanting of a group of Derbyshire supporters.

The following morning's Times reported that, on the final day, officials had threatened the "good natured" chanters with ejection after more complaints from Durham members and from Derbyshire's president.

"It was hardly the tolerance one might expect from an aspiring test ground," wrote Norman Harris. Hear, hear.

ends

Whitley Bay FC's programme, that other essential holiday reading, carries a lively column by Geoff Smoult carried Home Thoughts From Abroad. He's exiled to Southport.

Thus Geoff was able to report that for their visit to the seaside, Stevenage Borough left on Friday afternoon, stayed overnight at Warwick and planned to nip uo the M6 and then onto the M60.

It was half way through Saturday morning that someone realised a slight logistical problem: they weren't playing Stockport, as the planners had supposed, but Southport.

Stevenage finally arrived 20 minutes before kick-off and were 2-0 down inside ten minutes. Memo to other Conference clubs: don't be vague, ask for The Haig.

....and finally

The first Football League Cup final to be played at Wembley (Backtrack, September 2) was QPR v West Brom in 1967.

Robbie Young in Bishop Auckland today invites readers to suggest what was unusual about England's first innings total of 339 all out in the victorious test against the West Indies in March last year.

Back where it belongs, the column returns on Friday.

Published: 13/09/2005