'We had to sleep in a bush' - Eastbourne men blindfolded and left to find their way home for charity
Two men from Eastbourne were dropped off 150 miles from home with no money or phones and had to make their way home to raise funds for St Wilfrid’s Hospice.
Daniel Jeive and John Schindler Glastonbury, were sitting in the Aqua Bar, Pevensey Bay when they decided a good idea to fundraise for St Wilfrid’s Hospice would be to ‘be blindfolded, put in a back of a truck and taken to Portland Bill with no money or phones’.
“It all started one afternoon in our local pub, The Aqua Bar, when we decided we wanted to do something for charity,” Daniel said. “John is ex-army and came up with the idea of ‘Lost for a Cause’ for St Wilfrid’s as they’d cared for his mum.”
The pair challenged themselves to make it back to Pevensey Bay by relying on the kindness of strangers to help them. They were dropped off on the other side of Weymouth ‘one August morning at 4am’.
Daniel said: “It was hard work. We had to spend every night sleeping outside. We passed through Weymouth and then made our way through Brockenhurst in New Forest where we slept in a bush.
“When we made it through Little Hampton it started raining so we went from there to Worthing. We spent the night sleeping at a bus stop in Brighton.”
Daniel and John spent two days and a half walking back to Pevensey, but they were helped along the way. Their friends Mark and Gill Darbyshire, and Nicole and Neville Morgan, ran a social media page for the two and through the page people would recognise them on their travels.
Daniel added: “People were stopping us in the street and saying they had seen us on Facebook and when we would go in pubs they would say they were expecting us! People donated to us through the buckets, we also had QR codes on our t-shirts. But people also donated to us directly by paying for our bus fare to help us get back.”
The pair had a goal of £3,000 successfully collected £8,300.
Daniel added: “On the final morning, we were told to make our way to Sovereign Harbour, where a boat would pick us up. The challenge coincided with the end of Aquafest, a big event The Aqua Bar puts on, so when we jumped off the boat and swam to shore, a large crowd from there had gathered to meet us. It was a surprisingly emotional moment.”