Environmental campaigners land in Scarborough after worldwide travels

A world-traveller and environmental campaigner has shared details of his 18-year mission to save the planet as he settles in Scarborough.

Martin Hutchinson, 60, travels with his rescue dog Starsky, who he met during his time in Portugal. The pair have become known as “Starsky and Hutch, 21st Century Environmental Explorers”.

Martin, who is originally from Manchester, set off from England in 2004 with the intention of sailing around the world.

His journey came to an abrupt end when his yacht sank off the coast of South Africa during a hurricane.

Martin decided that he would continue his travels on foot and set off from Cancun, Mexico, in 2006.

He walked 34,000km across 21 countries in Central and South America.

Martin said: “I walked across deserts and mountains, horrendous ranges of mountains and jungles.

“It’s just good fun. I never stopped walking. I’d do 30-40kms on the road and go off anywhere.

“The idea of walking is to slow down, we’re missing everything.

“It’s just incredible, there is so much more to discover. Just observe, stop and look.”

One of the issues about being on the road is that a lone traveller may sometimes be at risk of attack.

In Ecuador, Martin had his first encounter with lawlessness in another country: “The first time I got attacked, it was by two young lads in the afternoon.

“They were walking towards me and put their hands out to shake my hand.

“They tried to grab my camera, pushed me towards the bushes and hit me over the head with a glass bottle.

“I ran out into the road and luckily enough there was a police car coming.

“These two young people ran away over the fields. The policeman got out of the car, got out his gun and fired at them.

“One of them went down. Then the motorbike police came and two guys came with shotguns and some farmers came with machetes.

“One of them kept on running, but I later found out that in Ecuador if a policeman shoots a gun at you the first shot will be up in the air, but the second one will be at you.

“So you better go down. The first one just went down to the floor but the other one didn’t get killed.”

Martin’s main aim throughout his travels has been to spread his message of caring for the planet. But his journey has not been without incident.

He was attacked by killer bees in Surinam. He said: “The most worrying thing was meeting two pumas in the middle of nowhere in the night.

“It was just me out there in the wilderness and I thought ‘oh dear’ and went and sat behind a telegraph pole with a knife out waiting to see if they would attack me.”

Fortunately, they did not and Martin escaped without harm and was able to continue with his travels.

He said: “The worst thing that I’ve seen would be when I was in the Amazon in Peru. Rubbish was being dumped all the way down the side of the river. Open garbage trucks just turn up and dump rubbish straight into the Amazon.

“I made a video about the rubbish on the beach in Southern Argentina.

“A local radio station ran the report and I was not allowed to walk home as people were phoning into the radio station saying they were going to hunt me down and kill me.

“It was only a week after BBC Top Gear had to get out of Argentina or be killed.”

Martin slept in fire stations, police stations and schools during his journey.

He said: “I even stayed in a hospital twice, I just went in and asked.

“In Bolivia, I asked if I could stay in a prison and stayed there from Thursday to Sunday.”

Throughout his journey he has given free talks in 749 schools and has done hundreds of litter picks and clean-ups.

Martin walked until May 2016, when he switched to a recumbent trike on which he continued his travels.

He met Starsky in Portugal after the dog was abandoned by his previous owners.

Martin said: “There were some cages outside the kennels at the local vets and Starsky was in the last one.

“He was very timid, but he let me take his collar off and we bonded like you wouldn’t believe.

“I thought to myself ‘this is crazy! I can’t take him!’ Never once was I going to take a dog around the world with me.

“I thought ‘this is not going to work but I can always bring him back’, but as soon as we got on the road I thought ‘yep! Let’s go with this’.

“He is brilliant with the kids and doesn’t bark, he is a star.

“Starsky has travelled all around Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary with me.

“He runs alongside and picks up rubbish and everything.

“In all we have travelled 32,000km through 15 European countries.

“England is the most litter picking we’ve done. I can’t believe the amount of rubbish, it’s incredible.

“England must have the most litter picking groups of anywhere.

“Starsky is such a hit among the children in the schools he goes to. They even sang happy birthday to him in San Marino.

“What’s going on around this world is just incredible, it’s amazing that we actually got this far really.

“The amount of damage we do to the planet is unbelievable.

“I would love to go on a tour round England. Scarborough for me is probably a good starting point.

“I was surprised when I came to Scarborough how many dog poops there are

everywhere. I cannot believe how many cigarette ends there are on the floor outside the pubs and clubs, just on pavements. It’s amazing when you look down how many there are.

“I go to schools and the kids are great, but afterwards, the same hands that were cleaning up are now throwing things out again.

“I say to them, ‘I just talked to you’ and they will pick it up and say ‘sorry sir’.”

Martin offers free environmental awareness talks accompanied by Starsky.

If you would like to find out more call Martin on 07864 722 731 or email [email protected]