News
Roman legions no match for THB wall-walkers
28 July 2010, London - A team of walkers led by specialist insurance and reinsurance broker THB Group has braved freak weather conditions to cross the span of Hadrian's Wall, raising some £20,000 for a children's charity in Grenada.
In conditions more akin to a winter's day, the intrepid team of walkers set off from the West coast at Bowness-on-Solway (near Carlisle), heading for Wallsend (near Newcastle upon Tyne) on the East coast. By the afternoon of the first day there was a brief show of summer weather, enabling the team to appreciate not only the beautiful Cumbrian countryside but also the challenges of building a wall 84 miles long - which took three Roman legions some six years to build.
"Walking 24 miles each day was certainly challenging," explained one of the walk's leaders, Charlie Doyle, a director of THB's Treaty Division, "but fortunately the many sheep along the way kept us in a buoyant mood as we were convinced they were calling Chaaaarlie instead of baaaaa. We even managed to catch and wrestle a sheep to the ground so that we could interrogate it and confirm our suspicions!"
The team finished walking on Sunday evening - tired, blistered, and stiff, but happy that they had raised some £20,000 towards a very worthy cause: The Queen Elizabeth Home for Children in Grenada. The home is a private institution which receives no government support and so relies on the donations of individuals and corporations to enable it to provide a safe, healthy, comfortable, caring and positive environment for children who have suffered neglect and abuse and desperately need the counselling services that the home provides.
"THB has been trading on the island of Grenada for over twenty years and when we heard that The Queen Elizabeth Home, which is the main orphanage on the island, was in need of help, we decided we wanted to do our bit" explained Mr Doyle.
