An employee from Redland has fulfilled a lifetime ambition and raised more than £800 for the Bamboozle Theatre Company by walking 96 miles along Hadrian’s Wall in just five days.
Rob McGuire, Redland’s area account manager for Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, came up with the idea after discussing it with former colleague Clive Bloom.
He commented: “I’d always wanted to walk the wall and when we decided we were going to go for it I wanted to raise some money for charity and I thought of the Bamboozle Theatre Company because the group has done so much work with Lily, the daughter of my colleague Steve Smith.”
Mr Smith is Mr McGuire’s equivalent for the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, and his eldest daughter is quadriplegic as a result of perinatal asphyxia.
He and his family have become very involved with the work of Bamboozle, which was founded in 1994 to bring multi-sensory experiences to children and young people who have moderate to profound learning difficulties as well as providing regular opportunities to meet, connect and relax with other families facing similar challenges.
Originally meant to be a mere 84 miles from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend, near Newcastle; widespread floods last year resulted in a number of river banks being washed away – and the damage had to be circumnavigated on an ad-hoc basis, adding 12 miles to the trip.
More about the work that Bamboozle does and its involvement with the Smith family can be viewed at www.bamboozletheatre.co.uk/families/the-smiths/
