Ross Marshall and Paul Simmonds, along with Gemma Brindley and Elliott Milnes, have just raised at least £35,000 for the Seve Ballesteros Foundation by walking 300 miles from London to Royal Lytham in just seven days.
Each walker not only covered between 40 and 45 miles a day, but did so while carrying a full set of clubs every step of the way.
Simmonds, 43, who works as a starter at Stoke Park, was the one who first came up with the idea. He likes to raise money for all kinds of charities by devising ever more ingenious endurance tests, and had just completed 100 holes in one day in aid of Help For Heroes when he formulated his latest wheeze.
Word of the idea reached Ross, 31, via Cancer Research UK within whose aegis the Seve Ballesteros Foundation operates. Ross, co-founder of Europe’s largest golf holiday company YourGolfTravel.com, thought of moderating the route to take in various iconic golf courses which had particular meaning to Ballesteros’ career, and hitting a ball off the tee at each. He also decreed that the walk should last seven days, rather than the original 12 which Paul had planned.
“You have to make these things really gruelling to capture people’s imagination and so increase your fund-raising potential,” explains Ross. But it turned out that – even though Ross raised £12,000 for the Foundation by running the London Marathon this year – he “totally underestimated” the challenge.
“The bag is such an awkward size and shape to carry,” says Paul. “You hit lamp-posts all the time, not to mention people. And it’s seriously heavy – when the BBC reporter Sally Nugent tried to carry it this morning on television, she couldn’t manage ten metres.”
It will no doubt further amaze readers to know that the weather was less than superb throughout the walk.
“It was raining about 70 per cent of the time,” recalls Paul. “We would set off at 6am, stopping two or three times to stretch and eat, getting to bed around 10pm – but it was impossible to sleep because we were so wired. By the end of the walk, your shoulders are just on fire, and you don’t want to know about the state of my feet. They’re burning.”
The pair trudged triumphantly in to Lytham at 11.30am on Tuesday, and can now pour at least £35,000 into the Foundation’s coffers, to add to the £2.2 million raised since its inception in 2007. Moreover, they also have two sets of clubs signed by every star name in the 2012 Open field to auction off later in the year.
“Our aim was to raise awareness of the Seve Ballesteros Foundation which works with Cancer Research UK to fund research into brain cancer,” says Paul, adding: “In Britain alone, 9,300 are diagnosed with the condition every year.” It was of course brain cancer which cost Ballesteros his life in May last year at the age of 54. The walk also aimed to promote Seve Day, a pan-European golf tournament in aid of the Foundation run by YourGolfTravel, in which any golfer has the chance to participate. As Ballesteros won two of his three Open titles at Royal Lytham, in 1979 and 1988, the 2012 Open offered the perfect platform for celebration and commemoration.
For information on how to take part in Seve Day, and to donate to the Seve Ballesteros Foundation, go to seveday.com.
To donate to Walk For Seve, go tohttp://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/WalkForSeve.
