South UP’s and Downs for charity!
photograph by Sussex Sport Photography.com
Rebecca Stuart, a conveyancer based at the Clevedon office, took on the awesome challenge of Trailwalker 2016 - that's 100km (65 miles) across the South Downs Way. Rebecca and her team completed the walk in 29hrs44mins raising £2,165, so far, for Oxfam and The Gurkha Welfare Trust.
Rebecca says 'The Gurkha's were amazing, as were all the Oxfam volunteers who cheered us into each checkpoint.
We started at 6am on Saturday, it was a beautiful morning, not a cloud in the sky, which was lovely at that point. However by the afternoon someone on the course recorded a temperature of 32 degrees and a lot of people were forced to retire with heat stroke. We drank a lot of water and electrolyte replacement and our support crew forced us to eat at every checkpoint. I have never wanted the sun to go down so much before.
The night walk was hard, at about 2am there was a long uphill stretch over some really stony tracks and it took quite a lot to get everyone up to the top. Shortly after that I started to have issues with my knee.
By the time we finished the following day we were all exhausted and I have never wanted to sleep more. I have to say it was the hardest thing I have ever done but worth it for the real sense of achievement I felt … the following day!'