This will be Mr Baudains’ second big fundraising walk and last year he completed a 25-mile route around the coast roads. But this time around he will be taking to the cliffs to follow the same route as that used by the Saffery Rotary walk every year.
Mr Baudains last year raised £5,200 for Carey Ward and the Guernsey Macular Society. ‘I bought a bed and all the linen for the ward,’ said Mr Baudains.
This year the beneficiary of his efforts will be the Lungevity charity and he would like to raise £6,000 to enable it to buy three respiratory devices which can take the place of oxygen cylinders for patients who use them. Choosing this charity was in deference to the fact that Mr Prevel supports it, after he was diagnosed with emphysema in his 30s and had three life-saving operations in the UK.
But the walk will also be in memory of Mr Baudains’ late wife, Ann. It was her death after they had been married for 60 years that led him to start walking, owing to being unable to sleep.
As with last year, his preparation has taken place under the guidance of Mark Prevel, who himself is no stranger to walking long distances.
Mr Baudains has been walking cliff paths to prepare himself.
‘I’ve trained on them so I know what I’m going to do,’ he said.
He expects family and friends to join him for some stretches of the walk but only Mr Prevel is going to be with him all the way.
The plan is to set off at 4am on Saturday. ‘I’m hoping to get him off the cliffs in about 10 hours,’ said Mr Prevel.
‘Nine would be nice,’ added Mr Baudains.
In total, they estimate that the walk will take them about 17 hours.
Prev’s more than a million steps
Mark Prevel recently completed a fundraising challenge of his own, walking more than one million steps during March in aid of Autism Guernsey.
He ended up smashing his target and by midnight on 31 March he had walked 1,320,000 steps.
‘In the last week I wanted to beat my personal best of 109,000 steps in a day,’ he said.
‘On the 30th I did 60 miles – 112,000 steps.’
His next challenge will be to take part in the annual Donkey Drop Out ultramarathon, which he has never done before.
This involves runners or walkers doing a 4.3-mile loop circuit around Sylvans Sports Club every hour until they retire.
Mr Baudain’s fundraising page is here.
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