12 Hour Walk

Why wouldn’t you want to raise money for the Tanzania link? On Saturday 20 August a 12 hour walk was held to raise money and awareness of the link. This is a great charity which helps support many projects out in Tanzania.

The aim of the 12 hour walk was to walk 95 miles in 12 hours. We set this target because the area of Tanzania is approximately 945,000 km squared. We knew this target would be hard to reach but we had to set something hard to make the event more likely to raise money.

Amazingly by 3pm we had managed to reach our target and had walked 95 miles! We were delighted as this was after only 7 hours. By the time it reached 8 pm and the 12 hours were up, we’d walked 220 miles! All of the people listed above did at least one lap and we also counted the laps walked by the dogs as well! The route was around the golf course in St.Bees with each lap being 2.5 miles. As we walked round we carried collection pots to try and get more donations. We also put collection  buckets in the pubs and cafe on route, I picked these up the next day. Throughout the day we had 28 people walking. 

We are yet to know the amount raised because not everyone has handed in their sponsorship money but so far we have collected around £150.

It was a really fun day and a great opportunity to see everyone from the link again and to have a good catch up whilst getting some exercise and fresh air. We were very lucky with the weather, there was only a few drops of rain throughout the day but at about 9 that night there was thunder and lightening and lots of rain. Almost everyone wore their link t-shirts, this showed that we were all part of the same team and helped to promote the charity. We also carried Tanzanian flags. Over the 12 hours we walked past lots of people in the village and were sometimes stopped by people asking what we were doing, so hopefully this helped promote the charity. 

We were very lucky to get to use the Scout hut in St. Bees for free which was great for dropping off bags and we always had someone there for health and safety reasons. It was also nice to have a rest and a drink and biscuit between laps. Each lap took about 50 minutes so people often had a 10 minute break between laps. We managed to keep someone walking for the whole 12 hours and, even though we had met our target at 3, we were determined to keep going for the whole 12 hours because it was a 12 hour walk.

I was very pleased with the outcome of the whole day, especially after all the worrying and preparation I had done in the lead up to the event.

Lucy Brock

Selection Weekend - Friday Overview

Friday 2nd October 2015. We set off for Gillerthwaite to meet with the group at 5pm. When we arrived we all got set up in our rooms, then met in the main living room to each write down a question that would be answered later on. While the first team was cooking, the rest of us went outside and relived our childhoods playing games such as 'hide and seek' 'black and buzz off' and 'splat bang'. Amy's team cooked dinner, which consisted of vegetable spaghetti bolognese and for dessert, custard, bananas and digestive biscuits, asante Amy's team!! After dinner, we all sat in the living room and each read out a question that we had wrote previously, this was a chance for us to air any worries with the leaders and for them to answer any questions we had about the outward trip. Next we were all split into 4 teams to participate in the Derdian team building challenge, 2 groups were Derdians and the other 2 groups were the engineers. Before bed we all sat in the living room chatting, needless to say the main topic of conversation was the outward visit and reminiscing about the inward visit! Then it was time for bed, ready for our next early morning.

Yasmin Hailes