| Dial-a-Cab
help sponsor many drivers and staff who take part
in challenges to raise money for a worthy cause.
We don’t sponsor many clients, but made an
exception with Kate Bayliss who works for Kirkland
and Ellis and her China trek in aid of Cancer
Research UK. In her 6 day trek, Kate covered 40
miles of the Great Wall and a total of 13,500 feet
- that's the same as climbing Canary Wharf more
that sixteen times in six days! Kate gave Call
Sign her story… "Everyone has their own personal reason for taking part in an ultimate challenge in aid of Cancer Research UK and mine was no different. After losing my mum to breast cancer in 1997 and knowing that other members of my family have had the disease and thankfully survived, I decided to raise funds to help this very worthwhile cause. Since 1999, I have taken part in the Race for Life, however this year I decided to push myself that bit further and found out that the challenge is not just in the final trek, but in all the fundraising and training as well. By taking part in the Race for Life each year, I’ve seen just how many people are affected either by losing people to this disease or who are celebrating the fact that they, or those closest to them, have survived. So at the beginning of October, I left the comfort of home for 6 days of trekking on and around the Great Wall of China. Our group was a mixture of ages, ability and backgrounds, with the majority of people there either because they were survivors of cancer or they had lost someone to the disease and wanted to make a difference. There were 60 people in total on the trek and on the first day we were split into 3 separate groups. This meant that we weren't too scary when we met regular tourists - I'm sure you'll agree that the sight of 60 trekkers in bright pink t-shirts could be a little frightening! It certainly got harder to get up for our 6.30am wake-up call, as each day you felt more in need of |
KATE’S CHINA TREK |
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lie-in. We all helped each other, so when you felt it was getting too hard, you soon found someone to help you up the steps or who would stop you from slipping down the hills on the unrenovated parts of the walls! Although my legs didn't ache and I didn't have any blisters (obviously all my training paid off), I knew by that final day that I had feet, which was a very strange feeling. I think we would have all preferred to know that we had achieved the 'Kylie' bum that kept so many women going as we struggled up yet more steps. Oddly enough, if we did achieve it, we seemed to lose it again the moment that we got to our free day in Beijing at the end of the trek! The trek was as hard as it looks, but at the time you didn’t notice it too much as you stopped every so often just to turn around and see what you had achieved, to look at the amazing scenery and take yet more photos, or you were chatting to other people about why there weren’t any banana fritters at dinner or how you were going to have a roast dinner or sausages |
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mash when you got home! However, on our final day I think we all struggled to get going as we had to climb 1,000 steps just to reach the wall itself and we knew that we had only 4 hours of trekking as opposed to the usual 6/7 hours that we had become used to. Finally, on our last night at dinner, we were chatting about what the trek had meant to us and had to name one memory, one moment and one message. These are mine: The memory was looking at the wall from our first lodge and realising that we really were going to climb all the way up to the top. The moment involved walking up the final 400 steps on our last day and the message was that there will always be people around to help you complete whatever challenge you face in life, no matter how big or small that challenge is. A big thank you to all my sponsors including Dial-a-Cab…" Kate Bayliss, |
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