Walk Free

Charlie was nearing the end of her PhD and, after three years of work, was thinking about the big question – "What next?" As it happened, she was reading Bill Bryson's 'Notes on a Small Island' and got the inspiration to hike around the coast of the UK. After a bit of research, in which she found this to be in excess of 12,000 miles, she decided to settle for the next best thing – the famous End-to-End hike from Lands End, Cornwall, to John o' Groats, Caithness; closer to a mere 1,200 miles.

After phoning Nick to share her plan, he said it sounded great and also wanted to do it, so the planning began. We thought it would be a perfect opportunity to fundraise for two causes that we wanted to support having heard much about the work that they do. Our trip begins in Autumn 2009 and we will be walking top-to-bottom – hopefully the weather conditions should be less difficult in Cornwall come December than the tip of Scotland.

We estimate that the hike will take approximately 85 days, averaging 15 miles per day. This includes days to refuel, buy food, and book the next few days of accommodation and, of course, rest our weary feet. You can follow our progress and see the route we are taking.

Yes. We would love people to get involved with Walk Free. You can help us in the following ways:

• Make a donation
• Raise awareness of human trafficking and the use of children in war
• Join us on a part of our hike
• Sponsor us personally by offering us dinner, bed & breakfast in your home
• You can also get involved with The A21 Campaign or Watoto Child Care Ministries directly.

The A21 Campaign is a registered charity of the USA, Greece and Australia, but not the UK. This means that we cannot use a UK fundraising site such as Justgiving. Watoto Child Care Ministries is a UK charity (registered number 1090810), however we wish to donate specifically to the Gulu Project so we need to make one payment rather than many via an automated fundraising site which pays out directly to the main body of the charity.

It has also come to our attention that Justgiving take a 5% cut of the monies paid to any charity whereas using PayPal we can ensure that more of your money goes to the charity as PayPal will only take at most 3.4% + £0.20 which we feel is more acceptable.

Yes, we will also be able to take donations via cheque or bank transfer — in fact, we would like to encourage this because this will allow your entire donation to go to the charities without PayPal taking a cut. Please contact us if you would like to donate in this way for details.

As mentioned above (link) we are using PayPal which provides no system for collecting Gift Aid on donations. We are also unable to make Gift Aid requests for The A21 Campaign as they are not a UK registered charity.

We will, however, be able to take your name and address online as a declaration of your intent to add Gift Aid to the part of your donation that goes to Watoto Child Care Ministries. These details will be used solely for the purpose of Gift Aid.

We have budgeted that trip costs will be £4,400. This breaks down to £650 food, £3200 accommodation, £400 equipment and medical, and £150 travel (to start and from finish). We are in the fortunate position to be able to borrow some equipment from a hiking club (stove, maps), allowing us to reduce food costs. We anticipate that we will be able to get some sponsorship through family and friends in our "buy us dinner" and "accommodate us" scheme. We are also approaching various businesses for sponsorship.

We have both been part of Hillsong Church London and were particularly motivated by their "Because We Can" message. This message is simply a response to issues in our world in that "something should be done about this, somebody should do something, and it might as well be me". Two of the projects that Hillsong Church London partner through this message are The A21 Campaign and Watoto, projects which are particularly rooted in our hearts. We've decided to try and make a difference. Hillsong Church London also partners with other projects – find out more.