Introducing our newest charity champion Nyle Yates, who recently completed a mammoth challenge for Alder Hey Children’s Charity. Nyle managed to walk 22 miles from Saltburn to Whitby on 19th August 2023. He and his group have raised £2,706 so far, which is truly inspiring. Here in his own words he explains his experience... 

After waking up in Middlesbrough at a time somewhere between starting work and catching an early morning EasyJet flight to Tenerife, the organiser of the upcoming charity walk, Nigel turned up at my friends house to pick us up. 
 
Fuelled with a solitary banana but armed with backpacks full of sandwiches, sweets and energy bars – the 6 of us jumped into his VW campervan that only had 5 seats. As people's top eyelids started to unstick from the bottom ones, conversation began to pick up: “are you wearing trainers or boots?”, “do you do much walking?”, “do you reckon a Jaffa Cake is a cake or a biscuit?”. 

After a 15 minute scenic drive we arrived at a March 2020 esque Saltburn-by-the-sea with nary a beach towel or dog walker to be seen. We piled out of the car and started to unnecessarily re-organise our backpacks. Nerves were obviously high, though nobody could explain why as it wasn’t like we were going tightrope walking. 

Slowly more and more people trickled in, friends, family and other North East characters until there were about 20 of us, ready to go. “I think we’re doing an introduction before we set off.” Said Hannah, my friend and flatmate.  
“What, like a ‘go round in a circle and say your name and a fun fact about yourself’?” I replied. 
“Yeah.” 
“I’m going home.” 

Turns out the introduction was hosted by Nigel who whipped round the circle, said everyone’s names and reminded us why we were there: to raise money for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital who had cared for his daughter Scarlett. Scarlett had fallen at a school dance at the age of 12 and as a result discovered she had a rare bone cancer, which ultimately led to her having her leg amputated. Nigel also added that another member of the walking party, Guy, has a sister, Joy, who had also been diagnosed with the same cancer as Scarlett and he was raising money for joint purposes, with half going to his sister’s cause and half to our cause.

It was finally time to set off on our 22 mile walk from Saltburn to Whitby. Somehow, despite having never set foot in Middlesbrough let alone Saltburn I found myself leading the pack. With a shock bigger than Man City winning the premier league last season, I went the wrong way after approximately 3 minutes and a kind lady walking by redirected us. Deciding resolutely to retire as pack leader for the rest of the walk, I landed myself in the middle of the herd. 

Anyone who’s been walking for long distances know that it isn’t necessarily the glamourous hacking-through-the-jungle-to-find-yourself experience that Leo DiCaprio portrays in ‘The Beach’. It’s much more looking at the back of various people’s heels as you put one foot in front of the other for hours on end whilst wondering when the next stop is. However, there are a few items of note to report: 

There were inevitably some people struggling, those who had new, untested shoes or had recently had operations, or known knee/back issues. At one point I found myself behind a girl who had resorted to walking in her socks. “My shoes are giving me back pain and the pain of stones in my feet is nowhere near as bad.” Fair enough, shout out to Under Armour socks – I didn’t spot a single hole. 

The sun was absolutely ripping and we were totally exposed to it, however the wind was also doing its best impression of the big bad wolf which makes you feel like you’re not in the sun! Fantastic for sunburn as you can imagine, fear not – the organised ones of the group had brought sun cream and dished it out to the unorganised ones of the group and saved us all from looking like Dave from Kent on the hotel balcony after his first day in Greece. 

About halfway into the walk (just shy of 11 miles) we rocked into Staithes which was an unexpectedly nice little village by the sea. Not unexpected in the sense that it had a reputation of dog fighting and illegal gambling, it was just a really nice village. 

Anyway, the most important and gorgeous part of Staithes was that it was the scheduled lunch stop, perfect, time for a sit down to devour the ham butties I’d been carrying around in 22 degree heat for 4 hours. But that wasn’t the plan. Oh no, there was something much greater in store for young Nyle and the rest of the gang. 

It was a pub. Shockwaves rippled through the group “a pub? I had only planned on this at the end of the walk, what do we do? Can I pint now or do I wait”. I imagine these were the conversations flittering around most of the group, I couldn’t say for sure as I was immediately engaged in ordering 2 pints from the barman. Chortling to myself at thought of not ordering a pint, I stepped outside to enjoy my amber glass of fizz and the aforementioned butties. 

After putting some petrol in the tank, it was time to set off again. Halfway there now and with calories in the system (some more than others) morale had hit a new high. We trucked on for another 4 hours, inventing games and talking about other nonsense to keep ourselves entertained. I had a minor escapade where my trusty walking boots that I’d had for several years decided to betray me when I needed them most and started to rub my heels. Luckily, I had packed a spare pair of trainers to change into, along with the down jacket, fleece and waterproof that I clearly didn’t need. A quick swap over at the next rest point and some shoelace-to-backpack knot tying that my scout leader from 2004 would have been proud of and I was ready to crack on. 

After a solid 7 hours of walking, we hit Whitby beach which surprisingly signalled that we were almost at Whitby. Being the cool surfer-wannabe outdoorsman that I am I decided to show off and remove my shoes and socks and walk on the sand barefoot. In the process of removing my shoes I dropped one in the incoming waves, undeterred by this I continued sauntering down the beach with now 2 separate pairs of shoes not on my feet, telling everyone it was a great idea and they should join me because my feet felt fantastic. 

They didn’t. Whitby beach is full of stones and broken plastic spades, so I eventually had to wash my soles in a little puddle and put my wet trotters into dry socks and then into wet shoes. I kept quiet for the rest of the beach walk until we hit Whitby and most importantly The Pier pub which was our finish line. 

We regrouped with the other various members of the party who had either sped ahead or lagged behind and orders some much needed (second) pints. One of the girls' boyfriends turned up with a carrier bag full of Crocs for her and her friends, I think he got a couple of marriage proposals. He also unveiled another carrier bag full of matching t-shirts for everyone, which were most welcome both to signify what we had all just achieved together and also to mask the stench that was coming from the group as a whole. 

Stories, jokes and other anecdotes were shared between everyone, fish and chips were eaten and more pints (!) were consumed until the minibus came to collect those who were going back to Saltburn. With an atmosphere favouring the return flight from Ibiza, the minibus whipped us back to Saltburn where we were dropped back at the starter house for a Parmo, a couple episodes of the Inbetweeners and bed. 

If you would like to donate to the Alder Hey fund in Scarlett’s name – the JustGiving page link is below. 

https://www.justgiving.com/page/nigel-foggin-1685347688046 

Written by Nyle Yates