Their story, in their words…
Our walk commenced at 8:50am at ‘The Capital Ring Path’, Woolwich Arsenal, which was 40km from our finish line at Barnes Bridge Station in West London. With a high morale and Come On Eileen blasting from our phone speakers, we started the stopwatch.
We reached our first landmarks, University of Greenwich and Cutty Sark by 10:00am. Until this point the path which we had taken seemed fairly desolate so we were glad to see the hustle of civilization again. As we were against the clock, we hurried on after asking a friendly couple to take a group photo for us.
At the point of leaving Cutty Sark, we were directly south of Canary Wharf. Due to the meander of the river, it seemed like little progress was being made to pass the Isle of Dogs and we soon became frustrated by the sight of the same office blocks.
As we passed Canary Wharf and the river started to straighten out meaning the Shard came into view. This marked our entry to Central London, an area we know well which boosted our morale. We enjoyed a much needed lunch break as our speed was falling due to lack of energy.
As we reached a densely packed Southbank, navigating our way through the crowds whilst attempting to keep our pace high proved quite difficult especially whilst trying to keep socially distanced with everyone around us.
Battersea Park marked our last 12km of the challenge. It was relieving to finally be walking through greenery rather than the highly urbanized route we had taken so far.
After walking 35 of the 40 kilometres, we learnt to appreciate the smoothness of the tarmac path so far. The change of surface to sharp gravel for the last 5km further added fuel to the fire which was our strained legs.
We were tantalizingly close to our finish line when our stopwatch we used throughout the walk ran out of battery 40 metres before. Luckily we had checked our timing just as it had run out of charge showing that we completed the 40km walk in 7 hours and 41 minutes.
Favourite part of the challenge:
“Working together on this project with my friends after a long time in lockdown” – John
“Seeing the sunset over the river as we reached the station gave us a feeling of accomplishment”- Sofia
“It was somewhat comedic and somewhat ridiculous as we innovated walking forms to reduce the pain” – Darius
“Incredible experience not only to travel straight through the heart of London but to push ourselves at the very end when energy and enthusiasm was low” – Shane
