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A grieving mother speaks out about her adventurous daughter Rosalind Fuller, former Black Lion swimmer from Gravesend, who died on holiday

09:00, 16 November 2015

updated: 09:08, 16 November 2015

A grieving mother has spoken about her adventurous, but sensible, daughter who died while on holiday.

Rosalind Fuller, a former member of Gillingham’s Black Lion Swimming Club for years who grew up in Gravesend, was described as the sort of person who would always do the right thing.

The 24-year-old, known as Roz, was on an adventure holiday in the Turkish coastal town of Kas when she took a wrong turn on a bike ride and cycled into a five-way junction where she was hit by a taxi, an inquest opening heard last week.

Rosalind Fuller on one of her many adventure holidays
Rosalind Fuller on one of her many adventure holidays

It was the fifth holiday she had been on this year, having gone away with her family twice and another two adventure holidays by herself.

Her mother Margaret said: “She got bored quickly and loved her holidays. She wasn’t afraid to go and do these things, but she was always very safe. One holiday was in Finland where she went on husky rides and built igloos.

“She got bored quickly and loved her holidays. She wasn’t afraid to go and do these things, but she was always very safe" - Margaret Fuller

“She also went over to what used to be the communist East Germany and met some family out there, as my mother was German.”

The whole family were due to fly out to Egypt this December.

“She loved ancient history and we were planning to doing the pyramids and the tombs.

“We walked across Hadrian’s Wall last year and after her AS levels went to Tunisia to see all the Roman sites.”

The adventurous lifestyle did not end there. After leaving school, she did an apprenticeship at Network Rail and, after qualifying a couple of years ago, got a job in its telecommunications team which meant she was regularly climbing towers to carry out maintenance work.

Her depot was based in Ashford but she worked all round the county.

When she was not out on her own explorations, the former Gravesend Grammar School pupil, who was brought up in the town, also did a lot to inspire young women.

Rosalind Fuller was tragically killed in Turkey last year
Rosalind Fuller was tragically killed in Turkey last year

She would go into schools and get involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) events to help inspire girls into engineering. She also selected those who had done particularly well to take part in outdoor activity challenges.

Mrs Fuller said: “They were meant to be incentives for the girls, and she would always chose those who worked the hardest, not necessarily the ones the teachers picked.

“It gave them a chance to do things they hadn’t done before. This Easter she joined them for five days in Wales where they went hiking and canoeing.

“She was very much somebody who did the right thing.”

The close-knit family, including her father Les, and older brother Alex, have been left heartbroken.

“We are all devastated, she was our whole life” - Margaret Fuller

“We are all devastated, she was our whole life. It would have broken my parents, and parents-in-law if they were still alive.”

Mrs Fuller described her daughter as a young woman who loved cooking and trying new foods and restaurants. She was in no rush to leave the family home, and only moved into her own place in Barming a year ago.

Rosalind had a lot of friends and Mrs Fuller said she was “everybody’s agony aunt, because she listened and she was sensible”.

But she was also generous, feisty and had a dry sense of humour.

She worked hard, and was in the process of doing an Open University degree in business management, to help her progress in her career with Network Rail.

Her former coach at the Black Lion, Steve Nickalls, said she was always very popular with the other swimmers, and they would often exchange banter, as she “always had something to say.”

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