Hardwick resident Alex Hallam walks the village’s rec – for 24 hours

Hardwick resident Alex Hallam has completed a rather unusual challenge – walking around the village rec for 24 hours to raise money for Hardwick Pre-School.

From 7am on Saturday (31 May) to 7am on Sunday (1 June), the firefighter who works out of Parkside covered a distance of 72.5 miles, accompanied by well-wishers.

His JustGiving page has so far raised £1,265.

“My wife is part of the PTA, and she’s constantly going out and helping and trying to raise money for the school,” explains Alex, whose daughter attends Hardwick Pre-School.

“I didn’t realise it was all funded through charity and donations, so I thought what could I do? I wanted to try and get involved.”

He continues: “I’d bought a smartwatch and at the beginning, I was getting notifications: ‘Well done, congratulations, you’ve done 100 steps, 1,000 steps’ and it was just those milestones.

“And I thought to myself, ‘How many steps is the maximum that you can actually achieve?’.

“It’s 100,000, and I mentioned it to my wife, I said ‘I’d really like to get that 100,000 at some point’.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you do it and try and raise a bit of money?’. And that was the beginning of it.”

Alex notes that his original intention was to raise £250.

“I thought, ‘If I can just raise that, I’ll be a happy man’,” he says. “Then it just skyrocketed and I can’t believe it – I’m so pleased, I really am. It’s blown me away how generous people have been.”

Alex says he “stopped for five minutes at the 12-hour mark, just to change my shoes and tape up a few blisters”.

He admits: “It was a long 24 hours, I’m not going to lie, especially in the last couple of hours.

“But I was only on my own for about 45 minutes to an hour because I had so many people coming out. All these night owls as well – I honestly couldn’t have done it without them.

“Just listening to their conversations… and it was lovely to get to know people in the village. I’m naturally introverted, so to strike up a conversation with someone I find quite difficult sometimes.

“But they were brilliant; they just came over to me and said, ‘Do you mind if I do a few laps with you?’. It was lovely.”

So why did Alex choose to walk around the rec and not a more scenic route, perhaps along the coast?

“That would have been a much better idea!” he laughs. “I wanted it to be central; the pre-school is a part of our community, and as my wife’s done other events, the community always come together if they can.

“And I thought if I was in a central location, then they’d have the opportunity to come and walk with me as well.”

Alex mentions a recent “tragic incident” that affected the village.

“A young lad committed suicide, unfortunately, and it really hit the community and I wanted to not only raise money but also say to people, if they wanted to come and treat it like a mental health walk, to get stuff off their chest, to unload that burden, then I was more than happy.”

A bake sale also took place, raising around £225.

Visit Alex’s JustGiving page at justgiving.com/crowdfunding/hardwick24walk.