43^rd Annual May Walk
took place on Saturday 8 May 2010
in aid of

                  · Bromley Autistic Trust (BAT)
                  · Matthew Rusike Children’s Home, Zimbabwe
                  · VYP Projects

THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!  THANK YOU!

Once again we would like to thank everyone in the church for all their help in making our 43rd VYP Walk a great success.  Whether you marshal, cater, bake cakes, walk or sponsor, you are all an integral part of this wonderful event.  We are sorry about the inclement weather you had to endure and we will try and do better next year!

This year’s facts and figures are: 
94 Main Walkers, 116 Mini Walkers (210 overall) – the first time we have broken the 200 barrier.

The top ten was made up as follows:
1st Chris Buchanan (a great achievement in his 50th year)
2nd Matthew Buchanan
3rd Bradley Wood;
4th Sam Heys
5th Chris Wood
6th Joe Wood & Gary Wood
8th Gill Fuller & Julia Hardy
10th Oliver Bates, Matthew Wehrle & Don Roncaroni.

Congratulations to them all, especially to Matthew who was presented with the Martin Friend Trophy for first young walker home.   Our youngest walker was Daniel Weeks who, at three years of age, managed to walk from Eynsford to Lullingstone (4 kms), and the youngest Mini Walker to finish was Jonathan Payne aged 5 and the youngest Main Walker was Esther Fruin aged 7.  Certificates were awarded to Pauline Friend and Keith Hickey for completing their 20th Walk and to Chris Buchanan and Chris Price for reaching their 25th Walk.

The Uniform Trophy was won for the second year running by the Beavers but they faced much greater competition this year and so will need to try just as hard next year to keep their title.  The 3rd Goddington Brownies came in 2nd and the Cubs retained their 3rd place.  We were very pleased to see the girls getting a look in this year.  The second Uniform Trophy was awarded this year to Michelle Parkinson for her hard work in encouraging her Brownies to walk over a number of years, which came to fruition this year, and in addition for her help with preparing the rolls for lunch with the Moores on Friday Night.  The Large Spoon was awarded to Don and Margaret Benskin for many years of loyal service as marshals. Don has been a Roving Marshal for as long as I can remember – certainly long before we took over - which means being on duty all day, and Margaret has helped us out enormously by taking on extra marshal spots when they have arisen.  We thank them for all their work over the years.  

On the day, we had approximately £5,200 pledged in sponsor money and this should mean (based on previous experience) that our final total will be in the region of £7,000.  This money will be divided between Bromley Autistic Trust, Matthew Rusike Children’s Home and VYP Projects.

One of the hardest jobs we have on the day is sorting out all the spoons at the end of the Walk and this is not always made easy when spoons are handed in without any names.  If you think that you have not received the correct spoons or are missing a year bar, please contact us and we will try to correct any errors.

Thank you also to everyone who brought socks along on the day for the Matthew Rusike Children’s Home (MRCH).  We had an overflowing box by the end of the day and these will be added to those collected by the church and will be sent on to Zimbabwe.  It looks as if the overall number of socks collected is a staggering of 394 pairs!

So we will end as we started.
Thank you to everyone.
We couldn’t do it without you! 

Date for your Diaries
Saturday 14th May 2011 –  The 44th Annual VYP Walk

 Debbie Hickey/Debbie Price