Mark Blythen and Margo Oakley are competing on the BBC show Race Across the World, entering the competition following the last wishes of Mark's wife and Margo's sister Julia, who died in 2022. The duo, who had a fractious relationship for about 40 years, are navigating a 12,000km journey across continents with a limited budget and no air travel. Julia died from the rare blood cancer myelofibrosis, having a particularly aggressive form and undergoing a stem-cell transplant.
Mark Blythen met Julia while they were both students at Huddersfield Polytechnic, and they got married after 23 years. Race Across the World is in its sixth series, offering a £20,000 cash prize to the first duo to reach the finish line without phones, internet, air travel, and with a limited budget. The race covers over 12,000km across Italy, Greece, Turkiye, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia, from Palermo, Sicily, to Hatgal, Mongolia.
We entered Race Across the World to honour dying wish
Contestants have a budget of £26 per person per day. Margo Oakley is 59 years old and from Liverpool, and she is a hypnotherapist. Mark Blythen is a retired architect.
In Greece, Mark and Margo were offered a ride to a bus station by a driver named Nomi. Nomi's mother died of cancer three years prior, similar to Mark's wife's death, and Nomi's mother was an architect, the same profession as Mark. The specific details of Julia's last wishes that motivated their participation are not fully disclosed.
She hit him over the head with a brolly and then about three weeks later I went out with her.
How Mark and Margo performed or fared in the Race Across the World competition is not reported, and the current status or outcome of their relationship after participating in the race remains unclear.
It took us 23 years to get married but as soon as I met Julia, she was the person I knew I wanted to be with.
She was gregarious, she was funny and she was just everything I wanted in someone, a partner.
He wasn't what I imagined her going out with.
He was quite po-faced about me and my friends. We were young, we were having fun. He seemed judgey.
I was very judgey.
I have to say, he was a good husband. He was very, very devoted to her. He couldn't have been more.
One of the things about caring for somebody is that it's very easy to just get lost and focus on caring for someone.
People that are being cared for, they need to have fun and Margo provided that fun. I think that's what kept Julia going for so long, that Margo would come down and raise her spirits.
First night. One bed. Forty years of not really getting on... and he arrives with a 'modesty cocoon'. I just lie there questioning my life choices. Would you race across the world with your in-laws?
It's a continuation of journeys of caring for Julia. It's the next step. Margo would come for four or five days and would sit with Julia all day in hospital, which was something I couldn't do - I could not sit down. She comforted Julia. I would do all the practical things of taking the blood transfusions, all the appointments, doing the medication, and making sure that she was looked after. That brought us together and this is just a continuation of that. We became friends and realised that we could work together.
It was a journey, and there were checkpoints on that journey, but they were never good. It was very hard and difficult times, but this is a continuation, for the adventure and to see where it goes.