A North East man who walked almost 300 miles from Essex to his North East hometown last week has raised thousands for charity and arrived home a whole day early.
Dane North, a serving army officer and on-call firefighter, currently lives in Carver Barracks in Essex but walked the huge distance of nearly 300 miles to his North Yorkshire hometown of Brotton to raise money for mental health charity Mind.
Dane, 32, lived and slept rough on the journey and set off on July 1 with just a backpack and canteen of water, hoping to show that by speaking up and asking for help, people are more than happy to lend a helping hand.
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After completing the challenge Dane told The Northern Echo: “It was hard I won’t lie. It was a really hard challenge both mentally and physically.
“There were a lot of low points where it gets to you and then there were a lot of high points – the messages I got on Facebook, the people I met, people helping me who I’d never met before.
“I was hopeful that by speaking out to people and by talking to them about what I was doing they would offer food and water.
“The food was the one thing I thought I would struggle to get. I didn’t think I would get as much help as I did from people.
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“I took a place to stay for two nights, and I was offered somewhere to stay for two more, but I had overdone it on the walking and probably had a bit of sunstroke so didn’t want to stay in someone else’s home when I wasn’t feeling very well.”
The army officer walked for over nine hours a day and even managed to make it home a day earlier than planned by keeping going for an extra couple of hours a day.
Mr North added: “My idea was to try and wake up at about 5am and set off at 6am and then I would be walking for about nine hours until 3pm to 4pm in the afternoon.
“A lot of the time I managed to push on for another couple of hours and I actually managed to get home on the Saturday instead of the Sunday.”
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When he arrived home the Brotton-native celebrated with a pint of beer at the social club before going home to a takeaway parmo.
Dane has already raised £2,338 (as of July 11), smashing his initial £1,000 target, and hopes to reach £2,500 by the end of the month.
Now Dane is contemplating what challenge he wants to take on next as he plans to take on one a year, and his friends are already suggesting tough endurance challenges for him including the three peaks.
Anyone wishing to donate can visit his JustGiving page here.
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