Never forget how far you have come – how 20 middle-aged Dads learnt to just keep going

Two weeks ago, we had a pretty big adventure.

By “we” I mean 20 middle-aged men from Garden Fields Cricket Club, from #StAlbans, #England, enjoying highly variable levels of fitness. We decided to walk for 3 days, 66 miles (over 106 km) and just under 9,000 ft of climbing – and descending again (think Scotland’s Ben Nevis twice – and then some).


To say the walking the route was tough was something of an understatement – it was brutal …however, we also had lots of fun and stories to share as we walked – never a dull moment – and, of course, lots and lots of blisters.

We did all this to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital and Children’s Charity in memory of Maisie Ryan of Garden Fields JMI School. Our children all attend this school – and when Maisie died suddenly aged 6 last year, we felt we needed to do something to honour her memory. So we came up with the idea of the walk and set a highly ambitious £20,000 fundraising target.

For a very long time, as we were planning our adventure, it really looked and felt as though we would fall flat on our collective faces in fundraising terms – we were nowhere near where we wanted to be. Yet, somehow, with the help of 450 separate donations – from not only our wonderful friends, family, colleagues, but also many complete strangers and a little extra help from the wonderful UK Gift Aid tax break – we have crawled slowly on and on and on. We now stand proudly and look back down our metaphorical mountain at close to £22,000 funds raised in total.

So the point of this week’s post is to encourage any one out there who feels frustrated; who has had a bad day, week, month or even year; who doesn’t feel that they are progressing; to stop, reflect and look at the view. You probably have climbed higher and travelled further than you may have realised.

Celebrate what you have already achieved, before you focus on what you have not. Then just keep putting one foot in front of the other and tick off the small steps on the way to big progress. And let’s not forget that the journey is at least as important as the finish line: just as we did on the walk, you will travel with amazing people and meet some incredible and generous people on the way. So just ….keep … going!!!

By the way, yes, there is still time to support us … Please click on the link for more details … and please share the post if you want to as we enter the last week or so of our fundraising drive. We’d love you to help us take a few more steps before we finish.

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