For the second year running I was over the moon to be a member of londonbikers.com and act as a safety marshal for the Aviva Charity Walk London to Breakthrough Breast Cancer walk. The event is a sponsored walk for family, friends and victims of breast cancer to raise money for the breast cancer charity. On Saturday the 8th September the walkers were set the challenge of walking 44km through London from Richmond Park to Regents Park. The 44k walk represented the amount of people i.e. 44,000 who are diagnosed with breast cancer in a year.
We all met up at 6am on the Saturday morning in Richmond Park for registration, breakfast and a team meeting before setting off. We were given our official Aviva orange t-shirts and some of the folks from last year had their pink bras on (The bra’s were for the bikes of course!!). As we had already liaised with the organisers a long time prior to the day, we held a briefing of our own to go over what the day entailed, where we would be going and, what to do if certain things happened.
We started off wishing the walkers off to a good start at the park gates; we were put into teams and deployed to the safety points where the walkers would be making their way to. The whole assignment for the day was to make sure that they crossed roads safely and to give them loads of support and empathy, as well as keeping them all going.
After we had been at our designated post for a while, we were then picked up and moved onto the next site. Whilst in transit between post to post, we made sure that when we saw the walkers, we would beep the horn and wave to them, and doing this we receiving cheers and waves in return. This made the day much more fun and kept everyone's spirits up. Many of the walkers on the day commented that our efforts really helped them get through the day, with our morale-boosting words of encouragement and at times and acts of silliness!
We stopped for lunch at Battersea Park where we were able to chill out for a while, the break didn’t last that long and it was time to get going. We all deployed as a group through south west London, central London, south east London and finally through to the City. The route on that the walkers had to take was very long, and as soon we came across any of them we made sure that we gave them a lot of attention and cheering! We then all made sure that we stopped at various crossing points ensuring that they weren’t flaking too much, and just to give that final piece of encouragement that they all needed on the last six km.
During the last post that we marshalled, so many of the walkers complimented the Londonbikers guy’s and gal’s who were fronting the orange safety shirts, saying that they we had all been a massive support to them and it made the day much more bearable!
After a very long and tiring day we all headed towards Regents Park, in which we rode in two by two. On entry into the park we were greeted by hundreds of walkers who cheered, clapped and hollered at us. The feeling for us was totally amazing!
When we got into Regents Park we cheered on the final walkers to finish their last few steps, the park was absolutely bustling with walkers, friends, family, tourists and the general public. Our commitment and pledge to them was to make sure that every single walker had managed to complete the walk safely. We understood the pain that they must all be going through and regardless, they still managed to raise a smile for us.
We rode our bikes through the park in the trusty two by two formation, sounding off our horns once we were a little way from the gate. We were greeted with an absolutely huge audience, and the praise we all received was immense. There were thousands of people screaming, whistling, clapping, they were taking pictures of us and waving.
Once parked up and were then hurried to the closing ceremony. In front of us were ladies who wore pink t-shirts, they were the cancer survivors, and they had fought the disease and were making a stand to raise money in order to beat this illness. The words which were being read by the spokesperson had a very big impact on every single member of Londonbikers. There were lumps in all of our throats, tears streaming down our faces and sniffles were heard coming from everyone. In our own way, we all had gone through a journey that was indescribable.
The spokesperson confirmed that the day had raised £1m! Excellent! That means that there are funds in place for ongoing research, education and letting the scientists do their stuff. After the spokesperson had said their piece, it was time for the lead scientist to explain how the money would be spent and what they were doing to combat this awful illness. The talk was enough to keep lumps in the throats of us all. It's at times like this that you take stock of those you love and realise again how vulnerable we are, but yet also how strong and determined we can be in the face of such adversity.
After the ceremony had finished, the walkers were coming up individually to the LB orange shirts, asking for pictures, saying thanks, introducing us to family members and giving hugs before they went home. All we kept saying was that we were there to make sure they were safe, it was they who did the journey, not us. We received so much admiration.
It had been a very long day with so many emotions during our roles as Safety Marshal’s. In a way we all experienced happiness, sadness, compassion, tiredness but most of all togetherness.
We did this as a unit and the feeling of camaraderie will always stay in our hearts. The efforts of those of us who volunteered our time for this will never be forgotten, it was a truly great thing to be a part of. We hope this is only the start of us being able to put a little something back into society.
A huge thanks goes out to all those who put their names down for this event, to those that participated during the day and those that helped organise this event for us, ensuring that good plans were put in place and the day was managed as well as they were, given the constantly challenging things that arose from trying to see thousands of people cross London safely in one go. We look forward to the next charity event!
Bring it on!
Related Galleries
BCW #1
BCW #2
BCW #3
Related Articles
