Day 4 - St Neots to Stevenage

Waking up in St Neots saw another sunny morning but we’d been tricked by those before! Breakfast saw the obligatory Frankenstein-like walk to the restaurant followed by a Full English fry-up. Unfortunately I missed breakfast as BBC Radio Cambridgeshire Breakfast show was calling(can’t disappoint my public!) The team met up in the hotel car park to sort out the logistics for the day. Being Father’s Day Dave and Gaz were sporting their “Super Dad” badges just he powers required to get us through this long day’s hike.
The motorised part of the team were off to the Extra motorway services at Baldock, the walkers embarked on the first section of the walk, 6 miles along the side of the A1 through Sandy and Beeston before diverting off back into the countryside through small villages on route to join the team at Baldock.
When we started the walk strolling through the country side looking out across the fields of the walk was idyllic, now halfway into day 4 it’s all getting a bit samey! Even though you are walking in a group it still feels quite lonely when you rarely see another car or building.

The collection at the services was going well and as before the popularity of the balloons meant that the walker became blowers on arrival. Throughout the day there was a steady stream of travellers visiting the services and the response we received was fantastic. The bear and balloons were an obvious hit with children, but even for adults they provided a hard to ignore presence. We were all surprised by the generosity of many people especially in an age when everyone is collecting for someone. One thing we noticed was the amount of people who threw change into the bucket then asked what we were collecting for.

Barney Bear was a hit with one little boy called Leo was totally smitten, at one point we thought the bear (with Dave inside) may even end up in the family’s car! Again as with other times during the walk we were approached by other that had too lost a baby or were closely linked with other families. They all agreed with us that we needed to get this message out there which was really heartening and consolidated that this walk was really going to achieve something. In few hours at the Extra services we managed to collect a fantastic £327.77 so a huge thanks to everyone.

After a couple of hours of blowing balloons and “being the bear” the walkers again set off for Baldock town and onto Stevenage. After traversing the LONG hill out of Baldock it was a fairly gentle downhill run (walk) into Stevenage. Walking past the Lister Hospital we had to stop under the hospital sign which I have since digitally gaffiti’d. We arrived at the Premier Travel Inn, Corey’s Mill Lane in Stevenage, and being the only day so far that we finished in the dry we could all relax in the pub garden ready for the evening ordeal of food, and legs locking up!

Gaz and his wife Kerrie were due at work in the following day say had to leave, a big thank you to them both Gaz for his injection of humour and fresh legs and to Kerrie for her help in collecting in Baldock, ‘being the bear’ and keeping the younger members of the team amused, cheers guys!

For me the vision of the walk was watching the ‘super-fit RAF officer’ Gaz hobble back to the car suffering from his 2 day walk through the countryside, had Walking 4 Barney broken the RAF! It made it sink in of what a couple of fat blokes had so far achieved with little training. Not that I am about to challenge Gaz to any form of physical challenge as i'll fail miserably!