Gruelling 100-mile ruck march along Stokes Bay raises hundreds for cancer charity

Spurred on by friends and family, Bailey Atkinson took on a ruck march of 100 miles on the seafront while carrying a rucksack weighing 35lbs the whole way.

Bailey, 23, raised £1,385 for Sarcoma UK - a charity which supports people with bone and soft tissue cancer - in honour of his cousin Andy Farrell, who passed away from the disease aged just 27 following being misdiagnosed for years.

Despite a fundraising hockey tournament at his club Bordon Bears being cancelled, Bailey took on his own challenge to give back to the charity which helped adapt Andy’s home and make his life easier.

Bailey, who works in Waitrose, said: ‘I always wanted to do something my own way to give back and raise awareness for the charity. I wanted to pick something that was quite hard to do.

‘Having that idea that you’re raising money for the charity stayed with me the whole time - they helped him massively, they made his life so much easier to deal with and keep that normality.’

He started the march at around 3.30am on Saturday, July 18 and completed his challenge at 3pm on the Sunday - with a short rest in the middle.

Despite aches, pains and blisters, Bailey made it through the whole challenge. He said: ‘The first thing I did was sit down on the bench near me and it just felt amazing to sit down - I never thought sitting down would feel so good.’

Friends and family went to support Bailey and joined him for stretches of the trek to keep his motivation up, and Bailey reached his £1,000 target before even finishing.

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He said: ‘Hitting the target has been amazing, I hit it about halfway through the walk so that was really cool. That was another thing that kept me going.

‘It makes me so happy, I’m proud of what I have done - managing to finish that but I’m also over the moon to raise that money towards such a great cause.’

Visit justgiving.com/fundraising/100mileruckmarchforsarcomauk to donate to Bailey’s fund.

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