The Sanders’ Walk - End to End.
AKA The Extreme Diet!

Why decide to walk from one end of the country to the other? Has this always been a burning ambition or are we in the middle of a Mid-Life crisis having reached forty-something?

For Nick – Watching people walk into Lands End when a small boy on holiday, has always left a lasting impression. ONE DAY that will be me!

For Mike – Jumping in with the answer “I’ll walk with you” was all it took.

For Both – The opportunity to challenge ourselves and achieve something pretty huge.

Walking End to End is achievable with some expert planning, some fitness training (very little in our case “we will get fit as we walk?”), whereas climbing mountains or rowing across oceans requires more skills, much more planning, training and time, a luxury we both can not afford.

So the casual conversation and small seed planted in our minds starts to grow, we start to talk to a few people about it and the momentum gathers, before we knew where we were people were asking “when are you going to do your walk?”

At this point we are still thinking there is no way that this will become a reality, we are two middle-aged, over weight, unfit, busy business men! One silly meeting to throw a few ideas about, discover that it’s impossible, talk each other out of it and it’s all over and done with. Only the meeting didn’t go that way, a few glasses of red wine later and the list of what we needed to do to get organised was made, the dates were penned into the diaries and the dream is becoming a reality.

Whether to LEJOG (walking from Land End to John O’Groats) or JOGLE (John O’Groats to Lands End) is the next decision.

There are arguments for both, but our deciding factor was we wanted some support when we finished this walk and decided it is far easier to get family and friends down to Cornwall from the Midlands that up to the tip of Scotland. So JOGLE’s we will be. Map reading skills to be tested to the full on this route as we are reading it up side down, but do not fear, Mike used to be in the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) thirty two years ago!! and Nick gained a Wayfarer badge in the Scouts!!

Predominantly this is a personal challenge for both of us, but we decided that as this will be such a great achievement for us someone should benefit from our efforts. Four Charities have been selected to benefit from any money we can raise through sponsorship and donations and a target of £100K has been set. This is a big ask of people and puts more pressure on us, but we thought that like the walk itself, with a lot of effort, it could be achievable.