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Chris Carter and Chris Pender from Affinity Workforce’s sister brand, CER have walked 85.8 miles across Hadrian’s Wall to raise money for Temwa.

 

Temwa, who is AWS’ charity of the year, works in remote, rural areas of northern Malawi where poverty and climate change are a daily reality. Money raised from the trek will be donated to Temwa’s education-based projects to make education more accessible for children and young people.

 

The duo documented the four-day trek and here’s how they got on as they took on the challenge…

Day One

 

Day One started with a taxi ride to the start line in Bowness-on-Solway, heading back towards Carlisle which is where we’d spent the night previous. Chris’ dog, Woody, was in good spirits- not knowing the mileage he was about to cover over the next 4 days!

 

The weather stayed pleasant throughout the morning, though took a turn at midday when we were luckily settling into the last proper meal we would have for the next two days. Our avoidance of rain would be a theme throughout most of the journey, until the last day (not including a brief thunderstorm on day two, complete with hail and fork lightning!)

 

We walked a full marathon on day one, finishing at Sandysike campsite which we had all to ourselves and were hosted by Margaret and The Major who incidentally remembered the Queen’s coronation and were very much looking forward to the King’s!

Day Two

 

Day Two was the big one. It included the first sighting of the Wall, amazing scenery, friendly chats with some *very* chatty American hikers, and the most well-earned can of Heinz Minestrone soup in history!

 

We trekked over Craggs, Hills and Peaks for 12 hours across 28 miles of Northumberland National Park fighting the above-mentioned thunderstorm and a walking on swollen feet to a campsite that constantly seemed to be “only two miles away!”

 

At this point I knew I should send updates for our blog and social media posts, but was just too exhausted. It really made me think back to why we took on the challenge in the first place- to raise money for Temwa who support (among many other projects) access-to-education projects for young people in Malawi.

 

One of the issues these young people face is an unreasonably far walk to get to the nearest school. After walking an unreasonable amount of miles ourselves, we realised how difficult it must be, not only for these children to get to school, but also to then learn and perform well as a student. This realisation really pushed us on over the next two days.

Day Three

 

 

Day three was our last long day of 22 miles, but the weather held up and the terrain was much more manageable. We made it to that day’s finish point at Newbury, just past Heddon-on-the-Wall, and felt good about the last 12 miles to Wallsend.

Day Four

 

 

Our weather-related luck ran out on day four and the last five hours were the wettest (especially for Woody!). Regardless, it was an easy walk down the Tyne, through Newcastle and powered by coffee to get to the finish line which included ruins of a Roman Bath and Fort and a rest at the Museum gift shop (we got the T-Shirt!).

We hit £1000 in donations just before arriving at the finish line and we’re still hoping for more contributions to get us closer to our goal.

 

Our thanks to Temwa for allowing us to support their noble efforts, the AWS marketing team for sharing and posting our stories leading up to the Walk and throughout the Bank Holiday Weekend, and of course all our generous supporters who helped us over the £1k mark.

 

One last shout-out to Woody who couldn’t have known what he was in for, but was a very, very good boy!

 

If you would like to show your support to Chris and Chris and would like to donate to support education-based projects in Malawi, please donate here.