2009 Walk Diary and Pics
Background to the 'Walk'
Our Hadrian's Wall Walk started from Segedunum, Newcastle upon Tyne on 11th May 2009 and ended at Bowness on Solway on 22nd May 2009.
The team comprised: Jackie, Kate, Sue (Crook), Lin (Holman), Marlene (Fell), Carol (Coulson), Maggie (Dossetter), Rosemary (Hobbs), and Gill (Smith), who along with Jackie and Kate, was one of the original Red Wheelies, joined us from her home in March, Cambridgeshire. Husbands Dave, Keith, Geoff, Philip, Mike, John, and Pete were the team's roadies.
No expenses were claimed by any of us!! All the team are members of the Kent Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Centre (KMSTC) in Canterbury - www.kentmstc.org - for whom we are raising hugely need funds. We treated the adventure as annual holiday and we all paid for our own accommodation, food etc. Money seems so often to go into research, which of course is really necessary, but we need HELP managing our ms here and NOW. The KMSTC goes a long way to fulfilling these needs, not only with the valuable complementary therapies it offers but with the support we all gain from talking to the expert therapists, centre staff and friends made there, who are all in the same boat. The Centre is like gold-dust (but so much more meaningful and useful) and money is badly needed for it to survive and hopefully grow so that it can carry on giving us support day-to-day.
The Walk
At Canterbury Cathedral
Our journey started on Friday 8th May with a Blessing from the The Very Revd Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury, officiating and the Lord Mayor of Canterbury, Cllr Carolyn Parry, in attendance . We rode our scooters through Canterbury en route to the Cathedral and were met there by many of our supporters, both friends and other members of the KMSTC.
The Dean gave a very moving blessing and the Lord Mayor wished us good luck on our epic trip. Luckily not till after that did we get proper Wheelie weather and the rain poured and it was on with our wet weather gear which had kindly been donated to us by Colemans of Herne Bay - we were very glad of this as our journey of the Wall progressed! Meridian TV sent a film crew and we had to wait a while for the deluge to stop for them to interview us, the item was later shown on their 6.00pm news.
The eight members of the team attending the service were Jackie, Kate, Lin, Sue, Marlene, Carol, Rosemary and Maggie who form the Red Wheelies Formation Display Team, accompanied by our husbands, Dave, Keith, Pete, Geoff, Philip and John who were also the 'Roadies' on the journey and whose help and encouragement cannot be stressed too much. Without them the trip would not have been possible.
Saturday 9th we left for Carlisle independently, arriving at our hotel, The Premier Inn, Junction 44, M6 in late afternoon. This is where we also met up with our guest ninth member of the Team, Gill and her husband Mike. Gill had been a part of the original Red Wheelies and was invited to come along for the ride! The Hotel staff were brilliant for the whole of our stay, nothing we asked for was too much trouble and their help made everything so much easier. We were all seated together in the dining room and quickly became the 'cabaret'. We were also reunited with the Quingosport scooters which after the blessing at Canterbury had been taken by Forever Active to Carlisle by truck.
Sue was having a relapse (her legs didn't want to work) and had been prescribed steroids by her GP and the MS nurse the week before we left but had been unable to get the prescription locally in Canterbury as apparently there is a shortage of steroids! The pharmacist had contacted Asda in Carlisle who said they would have the drugs for her. This is the only drug that seems to help when we have relapses but she couldn't get them - don't think this would have happened without a big fuss if the drug had been for heart or cancer treatment. Lin took Sue to get them but was told to go back later. Dave and Jackie went back but were told due to the shortage Asda had been unable to get them so advised that Sue go to casualty as an emergency, Dave and Jackie took her to Carlisle General only to be told that they did not have any of the particular drug prescribed either but suggested that Sue be admitted for 5 days to have the drug by infusion. Sue was quite adamant she had come up to take part in the walk and nothing was going to stop her! She eventually got the drugs on Tuesday!!!!
Sunday 10th was a day for sightseeing and gearing up for the trip to come. Visits were made to a number of local tourist attractions including Gretna Green and Maryport while some of us went to have a reccee of some of the route we would be travelling. Sue stayed in the hotel resting and Maggie stayed to keep her company. Moral for those with MS try not to have a relapse!!!!
The scooters were loaded onto the truck Sunday evening and we realised that although the room given was thought good for the purpose it was quite a difficult trek to load and unload the scooters from there, being down corridors with tricky corners for the larger scooters we were using and also entailing the use of a ramp no wider than the scooters - a very tricky operation. But the hotel came to our aid and found a disused gym closer to the carpark for us to use which was absolutely perfect, so in future that is where the scooters were stored.
Sunday night there was little sleep for any of us wondering how it would be and those of us who had organised the whole thing thinking of all that could go wrong!!!