Horsham scout leader completes Oxfam Gurkha challenge

Assistant cub scout leader with 1st Roffey scout group Lynn Peckham-Hunt completed the challenge last month.

Her team of four, set off from Queen Elizabeth Country Park in Petersfield, at 7am on Saturday July 25. They trekked through the night, to reach the finish at Brighton Racecourse by 10am on Sunday – a total of 27 hours walked, with just 15 minute stops at checkpoints every six miles.

Lynn’s team name was ‘H.E.L.L. YEAH!’, taking the first name initials of the team members, Heather Emmens, Emma Booth, Laura Ashmore and Lynn Peckham-Hunt. Sadly Laura had to pull out of the team a month prior to the event, due to a knee injury, and was replaced by Heather’s friend Mark Mason.

Mark also had to withdraw from the team at the 40 mile mark, on medical advice, but the three ladies continued to the finish line and completed the course in under 30 hours.

The challenge started life as a Gurkha military training programme in Hong Kong and now serves to test participants’ physical and mental resolve along the picturesque south coast.

The distance covered is the equivalent of two and half back to back marathons with an average completion time of 27 hours.

This was Lynn’s second Trailwalker, having completed the event back in 2012, with a family team called ‘Peckham’s Trotters’. Despite experiencing torrential downpours, Lynn and her team still managed to complete it in 31 hours, 26 minutes.

Unable to persuade family members to form another team for 2015, Lynn met her fellow teammates by answering a request from Laura on the official Trailwalker Group Facebook Page. The quartet were strangers prior to the event, but are now firm and lasting friends.

Lynn said: “Training posed a problem due to our home locations, but we met up whenever we could and with whoever was available to walk, and we trained on as many sections of the course as possible prior to the event, with our longest training walk being 30 miles.”

Team H.E.L.L. YEAH pledged to raise a target of £2,000 for OXFAM and the Gurkha Welfare Trust.

Oxfam expects the total fundraising from all the participants entering Trailwalker 2015 to reaching the £1m mark, with pledges still pouring in.

Anyone wanting to sponsor Lynn and her team can visit www.justgiving.com/Lynn-Peckham-Hunt1

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