John and Wendy are walking from Land's End to John O'Groats

Life sometimes throws you a massive curveball. Back in March 2020 before the first UK lockdown, John was diagnosed with stage 3-4 bowel cancer. Then ensued 5 weeks of chemoradiotherapy, followed by a 15 hour hour radical bowel surgery in 2021 and a month in ITU. Negotiating the complexity of treatment and another course of chemotherapy during the worldwide Covid pandemic added to the challenges we faced.

A long held retirement plan of ours was to walk from Lands End to John O' Groats. Not sure if this could now happen, we never gave up hope. We held this as a goal during the long gruelling rehabilitation which followed. Grateful to now be fit and well (albeit with John's altered lifestyle living with 2 stomas) the dream is scheduled to actually begin in spring 2024!! This is going to be a massive challenge and to say it's rather daunting is an understatement. To raise funds during the walk will spur us on.

John was a member of the Business Club at Willen Hospice before retiring and has chosen to support this amazing charity which relies totally on contributions to survive. We also want to wholeheartedly thank the team at St. Mark's Hospital for his life-saving surgery and therefore want to raise funds for the department.

We are keen walkers and have trekked to Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp and the Inca Trail, as well as many UK long distance routes, but never this long.

The date for this epic walk is set starting on 1st April (yes, April Fools Day!) and we will be staying in a camper van each night and hopefully people can help us get to and from it!

Please help us by donating at https://donate.giveasyoulive.com/fundraising/john-and-wendy-are-walking-from-lejog

We hope large companies will support us by sponsoring the van (which we will advertise them on the sides of the van) but all of the other costs we are totally funding so all donations will go to the above two charities. The campervan is being rented to us by the wonderful Parklife Campers, based in Milton Keynes - https://parklifecampers.com/

Please spread the message far and wide as we want to raise as much as we possibly can. We will update you on progress as we trek across our amazing country!