Friends complete challenging commute for charity

LOCAL man, Ben Collins, has successfully completed his challenging commute to work, raising  over £600 for mental health charity Mind. 

The ‘Benathlon’ saw him and his friend Sam Turley travel his 50-mile daily commute to work from Frome to Taunton but not in the usual way. He travelled the distance by foot, bike, kayak, raft and wheelbarrow, taking 14 hours and 15 minutes.

Ben said, “The walk was a lot easier than I was expecting. We did a similar distance to what I remember in the Duke of Edinburgh award and that was hard work, but we arrived in Shepton Mallet after three hours 15 minutes.

“The cycle was a lot harder. We left Shepton at about 10am and arrived in Bridgwater at 1.10pm after getting lost near Shapwick and battling the holiday traffic on the A39. Sam found this stage harder, having injured his foot about half a mile in.

“Kayaking was good fun. There were now four of us in two kayaks and a colleague cycled the towpath alongside us. We had two locks to navigate in our slowly deflating kayak, so this section took slightly longer than planned.

“We then ran about 7.5km into Creech St Michael and the van went on to set up the raft. When we arrived the raft had been launched and the barbecue was alight. We all climbed aboard and pushed away from the side before capsizing and ending up in the canal.

“We decided to abort the raft after a short section took us over 20 minutes and decided to walk to the end of Blackbrook Park Avenue where the office is.

“At the end of the business park we got into the wheelbarrow (which was a welcome sit down after 48 miles) where we were pushed around and across the line into the car park where we were greeted with a group of work colleagues and a barbecue.

“Thank you to everyone who has donated already, we’ve raised around £600 but there is still time to donate.”

To donate to Ben’s ‘Benathlon’ visit http://bit.ly/1g95EN5