How we raised £1,300 for The Bradley Lowery Foundation

Me and my best friend, Adam Mackay from Redcar set off on a 40-mile journey from my home to The Stadium of Light for the Coventry game on Saturday 23rd December.

Both if us had work the day we set off, I know not the best planning, but my shift was 7.30am-4pm, and Adam’s being 4pm-10.30pm.

I picked him up from his home in Middlesbrough at 11pm, and drove back to Redcar, where we began our journey.

It took us just around 2.5 hours to reach Middlesbrough, where we took our first break.

We had found a bench to sit and chill for 10 minutes, chatting to each other about how much we were regretting the decision already! Joking of course.

We managed to get all the way to Haverton Hill, Stockton before taking our second break.

At this point, we were around 13 miles into the journey, and nearly 4.5 hours since we set off, and this is where the pain was setting in.

It was helped that on Google Maps, we were directed to the Transporter Bridge, which is shut, so we had to divert to Newport Bridge.

We found a small hill, with some grass and decided to lay down, struggling to stay awake, and giggling to each other saying, “how are we supposed to do this!”, But we got up and carried on.

Our next hurdle was to walk through Billingham, which wasn’t too bad in all fairness, but it was the last town we walked in before being sent to the a19 on Google maps.

This was when a small amount of panic set in, with very little pathways, and extremely strong winds towards us, making it extremely difficult and tiring to walk.

We reached the OK American Diner, and stopped to decide what our next steps were.

We contemplated giving up, which we were both desperate not to do, and tried to come up with alternative routes.

The decision we came to was to order a taxi up the a19, when the taxi driver qsked where we wanted dropping off, we replied “somewhere safe to walk”, and explained the situation.

When we left the car, we had no idea where we were, somewhere will a lot of grass, strong winds and really low temperature.

In one of my live streams, you can see just how much I was shivering in the weather, in all honesty, it was brutal!

We eventually found a path, and began our journey once more.

At this point, we were around 6 or 7 mile away from the stadium, and we were headed towards Ryhope, where we found a McDonald’s and chilled for a while having coffees.

This is where the exhaustion really hit, with Adam falling asleep on the table, and I ended up vomiting in the toilets out of nowhere!

As we set off from McDonald’s for the final hurdle, we had 3.5 miles left, which really picked us up as we knew we were getting close.

We had no choice, whatsoever but to have a pint, or 2, or 3 at The William Jameson before eventually, finally making it to The Stadium of Light!

It was a proud moment, and I know we didn’t walk the full 40 miles, but we still managed to walk just over 30 miles, which is one of my greatest ever achievements.

It was hard to keep the tears away to be honest, especially when we had some people coming over to us who had been watching our journey.

The Bradley Lowery Foundation is an amazing charity, who help so many people, and me and Adam are so glad that we could provide them with a Christmas gift.