Feb 02 - Mark Randall Donates £8,000 To Charity From Book Sales
After walking 7,450km from Gibraltar to Jerusalem, former Commanding Officer of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel (Rtd) Mark Randall, recently presented £8,000 to five different charities after selling over 500 copies of his book ‘On Ancient Trails’. ‘On Ancient Trails’ contains the story of Mark’s epic journey across Europe.
The following charities received cheques: Taourarte Educational Charitable Trust, RG Benevolent Fund, GBC Open Day, St John Ambulance and Por Una Sonrisa
“The charities I’ve chosen, some are very close to my heart and others, I think they deserve my time and effort to raise money for them,” he told YGTV at a cheque presentation event yesterday.
Mark continued explaining why he chose these particular charities: “We have the Taourarte Educational Charitable Trust, which wants to build a school for girls in Morocco. I thought that was important, as these guys found this charity by walking and being taken care of over there.
“Then you have the RG Benevolent fund, which is very close to my heart, as a solider of 26 years. That money goes to a charitable trust for soldiers and their families, serving and retired, for things they might need…and the GBC Open Day speaks for itself as we all get involved and help out!”
Other recipients include Por Una Sonrisa, a cancer charity for children which Mark supported along this walk, and St John’s Ambulance.
Mark is no stranger to walking and has been involved in many walks since he was young.
He explains his passion: “After suffering from a military accident, the doctors in the UK told me to walk, so I walked! I’m a walker, I’ve always enjoyed walking. I started off in the Sea Scouts and later on in the Army. A lot of people, when you all to them about walking, the most people walk is normally one day and they say they’ve walked 20/30km but they haven’t, take it from me maybe they’ve walked 5/10km. Unless you’re taking it seriously and timing it because walking takes time and on average, walking is 4 KM an hour or 1KM in 15 minutes. I can walk at times at 5/6km an hour but only for one hour or two but then I’ll have to change the pace.”
He described what his first long walk was like: “I started my first long walk in 2009 when I retired, when I walked with one of my sons and took on the Camino of Santiago, the French route. My son got nasty blisters within three days and had to come back and I continued and within a week or two I had very nasty blisters and I was using boots then. I was laid down, given injections and on the fourth day I started walking again. That’s when I started using sandals and ever since I normally use sandals when I walk!”
Since then, Mark has done twelve different Caminos de Santiago, the shortest of which was around 500/600 km. A few years ago Mark hit the headlines when he did a 1,600km walk from Cardiff to Gibraltar.
After conquering the incredible task of walking from Cardiff Castle to Gibraltar, Mark still wanted more:
“The second I finished that walk, I decided I was going to start from home. I wanted to connect the points between Gibraltar and Santiago de Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem. Why...because they are the three greatest Christian pilgrim destinations.”
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