Walking for Charity

Raising money for charity used to be simply rattling a tin in the High Street on a Saturday, but not any more. People think up all sorts of ingenious and interesting ways to raise money for good causes and there are lots of good causes from high profile national and international charities to little local ones all wanting and needing cash. 

I don’t have facts and figures to substantiate this, but it seems to me that walking for charity has gained in popularity in the last decade or so.

People have done sponsored walks for over 40 years though - I remember doing a 26 mile sponsored walk (with no training) when at school. It was fun despite the bruises and blisters on the day and the aching legs the next day. Many of my memories of school days have faded away, but I do remember the sponsored walk!

Choosing a Charity

Put ‘walking for charity’ into a Google search and there is a vast choice of charities to choose from.  Probably the most famous though are the walks undertaken by millions of women in aid of the breast cancer charities including the Moon Walks, Night Walks and Pink Ribbon walks. Often these walks have a selection of lengths to complete which means that whatever your level of fitness you can take part.

Walking for Charity

And take part I did, a few years ago I completed a night walk for a local hospice to help raise funds and it was such an inspirational night. The event was incredibly well organised and there was something magical about setting off so late and then traversing the town at midnight with scores of other women along the way, many of whom were in fancy dress! 

Extreme Walks

One of the Treasure Trails’ partners has recently been training hard for the Nijmegen 4 Day (100 mile) March this year as part of the Walk the Walk team  and in doing so will be raising much needed funds for the fight against breast cancer.

Dave has taken on this challenge to support his wife, who has undertaken the 4 day march a whopping eleven times. He will be the only male member of the Walk theWalk team and to maintain the corporate identity he too will be wearing the obligatory Sparkly Pink Bra T-Shirt!

Walking for Charity

His training plan is to complete 1,000 miles of walking before the main event and he is over half way. To date he has gone through two pairs of walking shoes, numerous options on trying to find the "right socks", more blisters than he cares to remember and has resorted to surgical spirit to toughen up his obvious "for office use only” feet! Whilst he would love to write a Trail or two whilst he is out there the expected pace of 15 minute miles rules out that possibility!

Dave said “Walking is a relatively easy way in which to raise money - no specialist skills required and apart from a decent pair of shoes no specialist equipment either” and if you’d like to sponsor him, he would be delighted. 

Close to home

To raise money for charity through walking doesn’t have to be extreme distances though and walking is often much easier to get involved in than jumping out of a plane (with a parachute of course) or abseiling down the Shard or hiking across the Sahara - although if those things float your boat, good luck to you. Walking a 5km or 10km walk is much more possible by most of us and needn’t mean weeks and weeks of training beforehand. Put 5km walk for charity into Google and lots of options come up - there is bound to be one close to home to suit you and your family if you are looking for things to do for charity!

Using Treasure Trails to raise money

Dave also told us “local youth groups have used our permanent Treasure Trails as the basis for fundraising - if I get a local group wanting to use the Trails I discount each Trail copy and I recommend they run the event as part of a larger 'do' (such as a BBQ) thus allowing them the opportunity to 'mark up' the entry fee to cover food etc plus make a bit of profit for their group.”

Contact your local Trail Writing partner, or speak to our Head Office in Cornwall, and see what discounts we can offer for bulk purchase.