Moonwalk London 2019! DONE!
It’s the morning after, or should I say, the afternoon post London Moonwalk. It’s now 14:30 and I woke up only a few minutes ago.
I got home at 7:30 on the dot, which was the best prediction of getting home EVER!
Let me tell you about my 2019 London Moonwalk! I wanted to arrive at the Moonwalk City in Clapham Common at 7:3pm at the latest and I didn’t make it by then. I faffed a bit too much before leaving the house, which meant that I didn’t make it to the Common till nearer to 8pm. It wasn’t all bad, I did manage to get some early hugs from Sara, Muvver, Favver, Andy and Carol (and Carol’s friend, who’s name escapes me). The gorgeous pink tent was there, in front of us in all its glory, awaiting us! After a couple of tight hugs and a few “see you out there for some more”, we parted ways and I went to the Volunteer side of the City to meet my Uncle Steve.
Once in, I managed a couple more hugs from Caz and Joel, who surprised everyone since he kept saying that he hadn’t found a volunteer role that interested him. Glad he turned up! And Caz!! Got to love those pink, furry leg warmers! They are an institution on their own!!
Another hug on the way into the volunteer tent from Collette!
Got my gear and called Steve to see where he was! Tracked him down to find him speaking to Ali and Garry Coulson. I looked away for a second and when I looked back, the 3 were going in all different directions! I literally shouted: OI!!! Where do you think you’re going? Garry gave Steve away immediately saying it was all his idea! Great throw under the bus there!
A few more hugs and we got to see Debbie Coulson and her daughter in law who was going to do the Moonwalk for the first time! And then it was time to go to the volunteers’ tent to get ourselves organised. We’ve been doing the zone leader role for 7 years as a team so we know what we’re doing most of the time. We got our zone map out, our list of volunteers and devised our different plans. After Wetinbra 2012, where we were supposed to have 14 volunteers and only 2 turned up, we are ready for any challenge that WalkTheWalk throw at us. We had a plan for the case we had all of the volunteers turning up, in case of half coming, of only some of them. We didn’t have a plan for the case of none of them showing up because Becca was on her way! I’m not sure we couldn’t have done the job with just the 3 of us but you know what, we would have done a fine job! That’s how much I trust in our abilities! But we didn’t have to worry!
Well, I did worry! We walked over to our assigned Zone 13 area and, from the list of 20 that I had, there were only 2 in our area. It was looking a bit thin but it was still a bit early. In the end, by the time we left the Moonwalk City, we had enough volunteers to cover most of our volunteer points! They came in dribs and drabs and all of them with great spirits!
Arriving later than planned did mean that I didn’t have a chance to hug my lovely JoJo and give her the tea bags of my favourite tea in person. Instead, I gave them to Sarah, the director of volunteers, who must have thought I was off my nut! Well, I am a WTW volunteer so being off my nut is a given! I’ve literally just got confirmation that the little parcel has been received so my instructions weren’t that crazy and Sarah didn’t contact the bomb disposal unit to get rid of the bag with the tea!
We did our briefing to the team and then we had 10 minutes to get ourselves organised. For Steve and I, that always means to work out which of our plans we’ll put in place and where we would assign each of the volunteers. The plan is always a very flexible on because we never really know what the zone looks like till we get there.
21:35 on the dot, we left the Moonwalk City to head to our bus. We should call it our mystery tour bus since it took us on the longest bus ride between Clapham Common. I didn’t know they included tours on the Moonwalk - minus the guide, obviously. At one point, Becca, Steve and I were wondering if the drive even knew where we were going and if he knew that we were actually needed around the Mall for an event? Steve’s regret was that he didn’t know it was going to take that long to get to our destination or he would have a kip for an hour! That’s how long it took us to get there! We were so close at one stage that we could have got off the bus and walked up to our zone. But we made it!
As we were getting everyone in position, I noticed that there was a girl in our group that I hadn’t met before but given that we were walking in a bit of a touristy place (we were around Buckingham Palace after all), I just thought she was walking with us for safety in numbers. She had her head in her phone the whole time... Finally, I took a good look at her and noticed that she had a volunteer’s T-shirt under her coat! So, she was one of our volunteers and she had arrived late but hadn’t thought about saying anything. I was just happy that we had another volunteer in our group!
There was some confusion with the toilets in our zone - yes, we had toilets! No rushing to the closest hotel or cafe, no portaloos either! Proper toilets!! - where Steve and I thought that we had to manage the queues but there was an actual team doing it. We just ended up deploying our volunteers somewhere else to then redeploying them again when the Team Leader of the zone 12 Toilets informed us that the first marshal point - which for us was optional - wasn’t properly signed and she wasn’t sure that the walkers would know what to do once they got up the Houseguard Parade. Becca and Amanda were the poor devils that got moved twice and they just took it in their stride. I love volunteers like that, just tell us where you want us kind of attitude!
We managed to see a few of our friends, walk up and down our zone. I’ve just looked at my Garmin and, from midnight, I have walked 13km. That’s including the walk to the tube, around Holborn station and then from the station to my bed but still!
One of the highlights of the night was Victor’s visit with hot chocolate for Steve and mint tea for me! Victor is a fellow (former) volunteer who always stops by our zone with sweets for the walkers and a hug and takes photos of the evening. That tea kept me warm for a while and it was a blessing in a not so cold night! So, thank you, Victor! Same time next year?
We finished the morning around the expected time, following the last few walkers as they passed our zone and picking up any litter along the way. I have to say, this is maybe the first year that the place didn’t look like a war zone with empty bottles, gel sachets, feathers and glo sticks around the place. We picked up a few things but nothing like in previous years. There were rubbish vans collecting bags in certain points so that also helped.
We said goodbye to our volunteers, mostly going home instead of the Moonwalk City. I gave my traditional We did it again hug to Uncle Steve and Becca and I made our way to Hyde Park tube station, where we also parted ways. I couldn’t get on the same tube as Becca due to logistics issues so I headed in the opposite direction to Holborn and then on the Central line home. I literally put the key in the door at 7:29am! And I had said that I had hoped to be home by 7:30! BOOM!! Best timing EVER!
Managed to eat some breakfast and then slept for a few hours, looked at my watch at 12pm and turned to the other side! Now, I’m sort of wide awake, have a sore body and a sore head. And you know what, I’ll be doing exactly the same in less than 4 weeks in Edinburgh and I’ll happy be in the same state then! We still don’t know where we’ll be but whatever WTW throw at us, we will handle it all with a smile!
Thank you to our volunteers for a wonderful night, great feedback to pass onto WTW, for handling your roles with a smile and helping our walkers have a great night! Thank you for Uncle Steve for our jokes, our hopping around like kids, our chats during the night that help us keep going, our hugs! Moonwalk without you isn’t the same! Thank you to the thousand of walkers who took on the challenge of walking either a half-marathon or a full marathon to raise money and awareness to the fight against breast cancer!
I’m off to relax for the rest of the day! Oh what a wonderful night!
