Two Durham University students Olly Lester and Ollie Crankshaw recently walked the North East visiting sporting landscapes in the region, including a stop at Seat Unique Riverside, the home of Durham Cricket, as the duo raised funds for Movember.
A growing number of men – around 10.8M globally – are facing life with a prostate cancer diagnosis. Globally, testicular cancer is the most common cancer among young men. And across the world, one man dies by suicide every minute of every day, with males accounting for 69% of all suicides.
Ollie and Olly describe their wall below, in their words.
We started our journey at 4:30 am, leaving our house in Durham to drive to Kingston Park, home of the Newcastle Falcons. Once there, we set off on our walk at 5:15am, with St James’ Park in our sights. After 2 hours of walking, we arrived at St James’ Park just as the sun was coming up, and spirits were high.
From there, we had what felt like a mammoth leg of the journey ahead of us, trekking out to Sunderland, and the Stadium of Light. After 4 and a half hours of walking, we arrived at the Stadium of Light at about midday, where we stopped to refuel, and change shoes. We opted to spend around 40 minutes recharging, and then set off, with Chester-le-Street in our sights. This proved to be the toughest leg of the journey, but as the floodlights emerged from over the horizon, we knew we weren’t far away, and arrived at 4 pm, around about the 11-hour mark of our journey.
When at Chester-le-Street, we had the pleasure of speaking with some of the staff there, and their hospitality was greatly appreciated. Spirits high once again, we left with the final stop in our sights: Maiden Castle. After 2 and a half hours of walking, hobbling, and slipping, we arrived at Maiden Castle and collapsed on the sofas inside the main reception, with a wave of pride washing over us. We had done it.
Why we chose Movember:
Movember is the leading charity changing the face of men’s health, and they target three areas specifically to help tackle: Mental health and suicide prevention, Prostate cancer, and Testicular cancer. All three areas clearly very worthy causes, and it was knowing that the impact the money we raise was going to have that spurred us on during our challenges.
We are passionate about the positive effects sport can have on both mental and physical health, with both of us personally having reaped the rewards ourselves. We are sport obsessed, so much so that we decided to start a sports blog and podcast, called Bums off Seats, so given this, we decided that we should raise money for Movember this year as Bums off Seats, and try to collaborate with some of the North East’s professional sports clubs, such as Durham Cricket.
DONATE >> https://movember.com/t/bums-off-seats?mc=1