Blue Lamp Foundation 555 Police Coast-2-Coast review - Mic (Darlington)

On Wednesday 25th May the team meet on the very edge of the sea at Whitehaven harbour, and were meet by a senior Police-officer from the Cumbria force, and a member of the of the Cumbria Traffic Police, who was there to provide a Police escort to the team out of Whitehaven for the first 10 miles of their adventure.

So it was, a cold windy, gray damp day that the 5 hardy Police Officers (3 lads and 2 ladys) set off from Whitehaven in Cumbria on the first leg of their 5 day adventure to run the classic coast-2-coast route to the ultimate destination of North Shields.

This event was organised to raise funds for the newly formed Blue Lamp Fundation to support Policeman who have been injured in the line of duty , and also to raise monies for the Help for Heros Charity.

The 5 team members had been training very hard for this event over he last 6 months , and had come together from different parts of the UK to take part in the event, this meant that the team members individual training had to be done on thier lonesome, in some pretty trying and horrible weather thru the first part of Jan and Feb of 2011.

Key to ensuring that the event went off as planned was due in no small part to the planning and recce of the event and subsquiant routes, and it is a tribute to Simon Bagge the Event Director that the event ran as smoothly and as effectively as it did - Simon put a lot of out-of-hours periods of toil to ensure the team, the support crew, and family members knew exactly what was supposed to happen where and when during the 5 days.

Without the support crew being available at dedicated RV's during the daily treks the team would not have faired so well, with the weather on day 1 and 2 being closer to winter wet weather than Spring/Summer sunshine.

The team completed the event successfully on Sunday May 29th as planned.

I think most people would agree that to run across the coast-2-coast in 5 days is a fantastic achievment, congratulations to Simon, his team and the ever faithful support team.