Friday 27 March 2009

Amy's Big Walk

I arrived safely back home on Monday evening after a hectic two weeks, went promptly to bed and stayed there until now. I was shattered. How I kept going through that fortnight is a mystery to me but I guess I was running on adrenaline or something and now that I can finally relax, it’s all caught up with me. Not to worry though, it’s just a blip. I’m still feeling a lot fitter than I was a while ago so things are definitely on the up.


Another person who’s pushing herself to her limits is Amy, a young lady who’s probably out there right now, covering the next leg of her long journey from Leeds to Cardiff. Every day for 10 days she’s walking an average of 20 miles a day in order to raise money for Link Community Development, a charity that builds schools for children in Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, South Africa and Malawi.

Amy came to stay with us on Wednesday night as a ‘couch surfer’. She found us through couchsurfing.com, a website designed to help travellers find free accommodation for a night or two. I originally signed up when LM was thinking of going travelling, basically just to find out what it was all about, but as being a member means I can probably help a few people by offering them a bed for the night, then so be it. Amy was my first ‘couch surfer’ to come stay and a very nice girl she is too. Very grounded, takes things as they are and asks for very little. In fact, she spent the evening in my bedroom with me, LM and Sam (a friend), perched on the end of my bed. We all shared some stories and had a good laugh though and it was 11pm before she finally dropped into the spare bed. I guess that means she enjoyed herself :)

Now 20 miles a day might not sound like an awful lot to some people but when you consider that a marathon is 26 miles, you suddenly realise that 20 miles a day for 10 consecutive days is actually quite a mammoth task. And Amy hadn’t even trained for this. In fact, she told us that the furthest she’d ever walked before was just 4 miles. Brave girl!

Amy will be going to Uganda in the summer to help build schools. A laudable thing to do, as I’m sure you’ll agree. The world could do with more people like her who are willing to actually put themselves out in order to do something to help those who are less privileged than us.

If you’d like to sponsor Amy, she has a JustGiving page at www.justgiving.com/amyleedsuganda. The minimum amount is £2 I think, but I doubt that’ll break the bank for any of us. And she really does deserve our support. After all, what’s a couple of quid compared to the blood, sweat and tears that she’ll be enduring over the next week?

Go Amy! You’re a star!

Sharon J xx

~~+~~


Stumble Upon Toolbar

5 comments:

Margaret's Ramblings said...

So pleased to see you safely home Sharon. Make sure you give yourself time to recover. I will certainly be going over to Amy's page. I have a soft spot for Uganda, I follow a young American girl who is spending a year working out there.

I hope that spring has visited your part of the world,

take care

Margaret

Jennifer said...

Nice to see you're back Sharon, you have been missed. Amy sounds like a wonderful inspiring young lady. I will check out her website.

Take care of yourself. :D

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful wonderful post, so inspiring - both of you!

I'm sorry I'm just catching up now on your blog!

Sharon J said...

@ Margaret. I've been resting up all week but will start venturing out a bit more next week. I'm definitely stronger now than when I went to London though.

@ Jennifer. She's very inspiring. She sounded a bit fed up on her update yesterday but with only a day left to go now, I'm sure she'll make it.

@ FT. I'm still playing catch up too. Still... no stress :)

Unknown said...

Nice article given
=============
web design