Brain tumour survivor from Eastbourne walked almost 300km to raise money for charity

John Kelly, 66, who lives on Carew Road Eastbourne has raised over £1,100 for Brain Tumour Research after completing a 280km walk from Portugal to Spain in August this year.

John had an operation to remove a brain tumour in 2023. He said: “The brain tumour made me rethink everything. I wasn’t able to go back to work and it became a catalyst for change, so I started volunteering.”

John started the walk on August 16 in Porto, Portugal and it took him 14 days to walk to Santiago, Spain, which is 280km (174 miles). The journey he embarked on is called the Camino De Santiago, which is a popular pilgrimage to where Saint James is buried in the North East of Spain.

He described, he felt inspired to do the walk after he had been the support driver for a different charity walk the year before and felt he had ‘unfinished business’ so he took on the Camino Walk challenge.

The tumour-survivor added: “It’s been an amazing journey. Across 14 days, I averaged 12 miles a day. In the first week, the sun shone and it was absolutely gorgeous.

"Once I crossed into Spain, into the mountains of Galicia it rained and rained and rained and rained and even though I am used to rain, I’ve not seen rain like this.

"It was more challenging than I think anybody had expected, but it was good because people were helping each other along the way.”

John, who is originally from Ireland but has been living in Eastbourne for the past four years, said he prepared for his walk by hiking along the South Downs and Seven Sisters cliffs. He is also a member of Eastbourne Free Walkers, a group that organises community walks almost every week locally along the coast and South Downs.

An unexpected feature of John’s journey were the different people coming up to him to share their own stories with cancer, because he was wearing a bright pink top for the Brain Tumour Research charity.

He said: “I had Italians, Spanish and Americans come to me, who all had people that were affected by brain tumours. People saw me and would tell me their story.

“There were lots of tearful moments, in a sort of positive way because that’s why people do it. They want to get past this point, so that was a big motivator for me.

"I hadn’t appreciated this was going to happen to me but it did. It proved to be a great motivational thing for me to go yep you have to keep going.”

Along the way John met a man and his 12-year-old nephew doing the same walk and they told him that the 12-year-old boy was supposed to do the walk with his father but he got diagnosed with a brain tumour. The man told John he decided to take his nephew on the walk instead because his brother was sick.

At the end of the walk John got a certificate to honour his achievement. He said: “It had rained the second week constantly except the last day, when I was walking into Santiago de Compostela and the sun came out.

“It was an amazing experience.”

John was given a passport at the beginning of his walk and along the way would receive stamps from hostels and cafes to prove he had completed the hike. He is still continuing to raise money and awareness for brain tumour cancer and a cure.