Midhurst woman set to walk 50km in 11 hours to raise money for the Air Ambulance service

Vicki Harrison, who took up hiking just months after major surgery in 2022, will be walking 50km around Windsor and the Thames Path later this month – a massive feat that should take her an eye-watering 11 hours to complete.

It’s all in aid of the Air Ambulance Charity of Kent, Surrey and Sussex, which provides the kind of vital service with which outdoorsy Vicki is sadly all too familiar. ”Unfortunately, a few years ago, one of our neighbours lost his wife – and their air ambulance came out to help,” she said. “Seeing them in action scares you a bit, because you realise just how vital their work is. And I think, unless you’ve seen it, you almost don’t know that. Hopefully none of us will ever need their services, but if we don’t support charities like this, we’ll eventually lose them.”

50km is an impressive distance by any measure, but after her surgery in 2022, Vicki had to learn how to walk all over again, step by painful step over the course of nine months. “Each day I had to get out and do a metre at a time,” she explained. “A year on, I set myself a goal that I wanted to walk ten miles in one go – everyone said I’d never do it, but I did. I walked up Cocking Hill on the anniversary of my operation and I loved it.”

Since then, she’s conquered several epic cross-country hikes, ultramarathons and countless practice miles. Vicki is no stranger to the trail, then, but this year’s trek will be emotionally challenging, too, coinciding as it does with the one year anniversary of her grandfather’s death.

Vicki said: “It will be hard, but I’m doing it for him and he’s always with me when I’m walking. I know he is. And he would want me to carry on doing this. I get an awful lot out of helping others, via the fundraising. It’s knowing that I can do something to make someone else’s life better, and that’s why I keep going."

Vicki’s grandfather was always a big part of her adventures, and losing him took the wind out of her sails for a while. But, re-lacing her hiking boots after a long time off, she found the trail led inexorably back to him.

"One day I picked my walking boots back up and I just thought I’d go out for half an hour. I walked for hours. And I just thought ‘this is what grandad wanted me to do, he wouldn’t want me sitting indoors moping about.’”

That sense of connection is part of what’s kept Vicki going these last few years, day after day, mile after mile. Discovering it not long after her own surgery, while her grandfather was in end-of-life care, and while her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, it’s no surprise she sought comfort in the great outdoors.

“There was just this sense of peace – it was almost the silence. It took away from dealing with people in hospital rooms and surgeries.”

To donate to Vicki’s 50km trek, visit justgiving.com, or www.coatoncoatoffwetfeet.uk to learn more.