Good Luck to our Trailwalker Heroes!
This year around 300 teams will be tackling the Trailwalker, a gruelling 100km trek across the South Downs. As well as taking on this incredible physical and mental challenge, teams will be raising vital funds to support the Gurkha Welfare Trust. So far teams have collectively raised £160,000 towards our target of £250,000 and fundraising activities continue apace as they reach the end of their training for the event.
Over the past months teams have covered thousands of miles on training walks, taken part in all sorts of fundraising activities and spent endless hours discussing shoes, kit, food, blisters and how they will celebrate at the finish! We will be unveiling the new Trailwalker medal and T shirt and looking forward to a legendary Gurkha curry at Brighton Racecourse.
The challenge of a lifetime
It is no mean feat to become “Trailwalker Strong” – the route follows the South Downs Way over tough terrain and with some challenging hills. In fact the total elevation gain is 2,763m – that’s more than twice the height of Ben Nevis! The cut off for finishing is 30 hours, but the fastest teams will be battling to be the first over the line and expect to finish in under 11 hours. Teams will carry GPS trackers so you will be able to track them live across the route – details will be on the Trailwalker website from Friday 27th September.
Good luck Trailwalkers!
Best of luck to everyone who will be joining us at event weekend – the walkers, runners and their tireless support crews who will be there at every checkpoint. We are also incredibly grateful to the Queen’s Gurkha Signals who put in an incredible amount of work setting up the event and manning Exercise Control, ensuring everything runs smoothly. Plus our super brigade of volunteers who will be manning checkpoints throughout the day and night and cheering participants though the finish.
Chris Bale has a long history of involvement in Trailwalker, as Director of Oxfam Hong Kong when Trailwalker started up there. The event had previously been purely a military exercise then was opened up to the whole community from 1986, raising funds for Oxfam’s development work across Asia. Trailwalker was brought to the UK by the Queen’s Gurkha Signals and has grown to become a major event in the GWT calendar. Chris was delighted to send us a message of support:
“Almost thirty years after we organised the very first public Trailwalker across the hills of Hong Kong, it’s wonderful to see teams of enthusiastic runners and walkers tackling the same challenge over the South Downs. It’s a wonderful event. Good luck to all!”
If you are not able to take part or volunteer help us make this the best Trailwalker ever by making a contribution here!