Traffic Management Operative Barrie Saunders has set himself the staggering target of walking the equivalent distance of all 11 HW Martin (Traffic Management) Ltd depots in 100 days to raise money for his good friend and colleague, Vern Wescott.
Vern, a much-loved character from the company’s depot in Kent, has been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. He recently recovered from a quadruple heart bypass, making this latest diagnosis even more heart breaking.
Barrie is not someone who can just stand by when times get tough. As he demonstrated in 2021 when he walked 1 million steps in less than 2 months to raise money for mental health awareness in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic.
This time, Barrie is Crowdfunding to raise money to support Vern’s family with the household finances as his progressive diagnosis takes hold.
He is walking the equivalent distance of all 11 HW Martin (Traffic Management) Ltd depots, one-after-another, in 100 days. That’s 826 miles* in total, or 1.8 million steps in just over 3 months.
The route, if he were actually to do it, would start at the company’s depot in Durham, to Widnes; then on to Blackwell, Coventry and Peterborough, before visiting Witham (Essex), Mill Place (Sevenoaks, Kent), and our colleagues at Amber Langis in Maidenhead. Then onto Winchester, Tormarton, finishing in South Brent.
25-days in, and Barrie has walked an average of 19,000 steps per day. He is just 16 miles away from Blackwell.
Barrie says:
I’m not someone who can stand by, so I wanted to do something nice to show Vern what he means to me, and to help him with the additional expenses a diagnosis like this can bring. To be clear, I’m not raising money for a charity, the funds raised will go directly to Vern and his wife Sue to support them in these difficult times. I would like to invite you to support me in my walking challenge and raise some money for a treasured friend and a valued colleague”
To support Barrie you can donate via his Crowdfunding page here on Just Giving: Crowdfunding to raise money for a poorly work friend on JustGiving
Or, if you’d prefer you can donate to Pancreatic Cancer UK. Less than £30 can fund research into a test so that people like Vern are diagnosed earlier. The earlier a diagnosis for pancreatic cancer the better the chance of recovery. Donate to Pancreatic Cancer UK – Pancreatic Cancer UK
Keep checking back on our social channels for updates on Barrie’s progress!
*driven miles worked out using Google Maps