Sheffield woman walks 1,000 miles to give back to charity after they supported her through an illness

Pauline Bramley, from Hope Valley, finished her chemotherapy treatment following a bowel operation, in November last year.

She wanted to do something positive, to transition back into ‘normal life’ having battled with the disease.

Pauline also wanted to raise money for Cavendish Cancer Care to give back to them, after they supported her with sessions of reiki.

Pauline said: “I was very impressed with the centre, they care about you as an individual, rather than just someone who has cancer. I wanted to give back to them.”

The idea of walking came about when Pauline was walking through the Longshaw area and wondered what she could do that was a bit different.

After thinking about what she could do she had the idea to do a big set of walks as it would be beneficial to her health as well as sociable.

Eventually, Pauline settled on walking 1,000 miles, in around five months, with as many people as possible.

As a member of the Hallamshire Golf Club, she decided to start there and set down different

walks, many of them were made up by herself.

These walks took place mostly around Derbyshire and Sheffield, such as in the Rivelin Valley, and information was circulated around the club by Pauline to attract people.

She said: “Each walk, I had no idea whether anybody would turn up, sometimes, in bad weather, it was just me. Thankfully most of the time two or three people, sometimes more, turned up.

Over 150 different people gathered to walk with Pauline and she managed to raise more money than she anticipated, bringing in a total of £2,705 for the cancer care charity.

Due to the success of the event, more people want to get involved.

Pauline said: “People loved joining in so much that they’ve asked me to do the challenge again this year! The ladies at the golf club are crazy for it, so we’ve kept the camaraderie going. This year, a group of us are aiming to do 20,000 miles.”