Page 260 - She's One Crazy Lady!

After the fi“
Our walks...
Our ‘Walk’ planned for March 2003 – a Walk that was to be repeated sixteen more times and was to become the Charity’s most popular and successful annual event.
What could be a better venue than Wicksteed Park? My childhood playground and Dad’s daily walk before he went into care – and where he and Mum first met, of course. Taking the path route around the Park would be ideal, as would the length... hmmm! It had to be Wicksteed Park so I arranged a meeting with ‘George’ the Events Manager, who readily agreed to host the walk – a date set (as it was for the Crazy Hats Day in schools) – March 15th, the nearest weekend date to mark my Headship appointment at Highfields, two years earlier. It was the start of a long and wonderful relationship with everyone at the Park.
rst lap a very keen walker, with a pedometer strapped to his shoe, made us aware that each lap was, in fact, one mile – ten
We had no idea what the response would be but we designed a simple poster and sent out/gave out entry forms and sponsor forms to anyone we thought might be interested. (Thank you AO!) The Evening Telegraph, once again, supported this and put an eye-catching entry form and reminders in the paper – which helped enormously.
miles in tot”
By this time, we had a few more people/helpers on board. We walked round the Park ourselves to map out the route and decided that walkers would do ten laps, safely taking in the top half and the bottom half, which we ‘thought’ would equate to approximately 5 miles. How wrong we were with the distance! After the first lap a very keen walker, with a pedometer strapped to his shoe, made us aware that each lap was, in fact, one mile – ten miles in total. We told them it was Buy One, Get One Free! No-one minded and there were no strict rules that they had to do it all. Some did the lot, others stopped when their legs told them to! Taking part was far more important – a policy we adopted throughout.
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