Billie’s Miles

Family and Friends walking the distance from London Heathrow to Barbados

Our group was set up with the aim of raising funds for the Billie Elizabeth Wood Trust (BEWT).  It was the idea of myself Karen Stitfall, Billie’s aunty, and my friend Elaine Higman. 

During lockdown, it has been hard to fundraise with all the restrictions placed on us and we were trying to think of things that we were able to do!  As many of us were walking for our daily exercise it seemed to be a logical thing to do. Our group initially started off as our local skittles team – The Mad Cows – but as more friends heard about it, they wanted to join so our group of friends now stands at 46 ladies!  The majority of us live locally – Pill, Portishead, Nailsea and Clevedon but we also have people in Newbury in Berkshire, Wells in Somerset and Ashwell in Hertfordshire.

Our challenge was to walk 4206.75 miles – the distance from London Heathrow to Barbados (Billie’s happy place) - between us throughout the month of April 2021.  We communicate through a WhatsApp group called “Billie’s Miles” and have shared photos of our walks within the group and have regular updates on how we are doing.  

Each Monday we let Elaine know our weekly mileage and she records it on a spreadsheet and then informs us of our weekly and ongoing total.  As things stand at the moment, we are very nearly at Barbados so we are challenging ourselves to get back to London!

On the fundraising side, I have set up a JustGiving page and we have each donated to it.  We have shared the page on Facebook and with family and friends.  Our initial target was £500 which was easily reached so I raised our target to £1000 which again we reached. 

Our target now is £2000 which we are very close to reaching.