News

The Chase Walk 2010

By Laura Sanders L5R

On 20th March 2010, I completed a 40 mile walk in 18 hours around Cannock with the explorer scouts, who had entered two teams. It is an organised event  where a team needed to work together to follow a route without any outside help and each team member was given a route card that had to be stamped at each of the 15 bases. The bases had to be reached in order and before the cut-off times. It was a long day from 5am on the Saturday morning, starting with breakfast and bag check to make sure each team member had the right equipment. After bag check my team set off walking from about  6:30am  and we had reached the first base by 8am. Throughout the walk, some teams had dropped out.  Towards the end of the walk more teams had dropped out and it started to get dark. At each base there was a cut off time where they would no longer stamp your card if you didn’t get there on time. Our teams were lucky to get all of their route cards stamped before the cut-off times. By the time we reached base 13 it was near to 9o’clock on the Saturday night with 5 miles left to walk to reach the last two bases. Everyone had been walking all day non-stop. From base 13, 8 of us including me decided to carry on and complete the last 5 miles. By midnight,  our team had finally reached base 15, before the cut-off time. We were two out of five teams that completed the chase walk and after the last half an hour walk back to camp, we were welcomed by lots of people clapping and cheering for us. We were back at camp for half past midnight on the Saturday night. Everyone who had taken part in the Chase walk received a certificate and a badge, which was an amazing achievement. Our teams had decided to be sponsored for the walk and raised money for two charities, Help for Heroes and The British Heart Foundation. It was an amazing achievement to be walking for 18 hours straight and a great experience.