Saturday 14th May is going to be a day to remember for Tracy Miles. She’ll be walking with best friend Wendy Stevenson to raise money for us – from Blackpool North Pier to Cleveleys and back, a total of 12km.
Then she will be keeping another date with destiny on the same day as her favourite football team Liverpool meet Chelsea in the FA Cup.
“We’re didn’t know who was going to be in the Cup when we were planning the walk but life’s full of surprises”, an irrepressible Tracy told us this week. “Let’s hope the kick off is no earlier than 5.30pm so we’ll have finished the walk by then. It will mean starting the walk a bit earlier on the day.
“But we’re up for this. Nothing is going to stop us now!”
The ME Awareness Week walk has been on the cards for the past three years. It was put on the back burner mainly because the coronavirus crisis has been messing up most people’s timetables.
Tracy, a school special needs assistant at the Park Community Academy in Blackpool, has wanted to do something special to raise money for the ME Association all that time because some close family relations have a child whose life has been put on hold by severe M.E.
“It’s so upsetting to see how the illness ruins lives. It needs so much more research”
Tracy lives in Cleveleys. She first met her best friend Wendy, a curriculum manager working with vulnerable adults, when they were both studying for their nursery nurse qualifications in 1986.
The pair, now both aged 52, have been out practising and working on getting fit for the big day. “We’ve not actually walked the full distance yet but we’re confident we can do it.
“We’ll be keeping away from the lower promenade which is always busy with dog-walkers and cyclists and taking the higher promenade, which is usually much quieter.”
Tracy says she first thought about wearing her favourite Scooby Doo outfit, which the children love when she puts it on for World Book Days and charity events at the school, but then she abandoned the idea.
“Wearing it will make me feel too hot during the walk. No… we’ll both put on the ME Association blue t-shirts and feel proud to be doing so. They’ll be so much cooler!”
Tracy and Wendy are running a joint fundraising page which has exceeded all expectations. If you would like to pop a couple of quid into their account, please click the link below
