Last year, the Edinburgh Kiltwalk was our largest challenge event of the year. We had over 50 walkers who put on their bright yellow The Yard t-shirts, walking boots and their tartan, to raise funds to support our services. In total, the team raised an astonishing £16,000 and we were hoping to break that target with our team this year. Unfortunately, as with most events, the current pandemic has played its part in causing some disruption to our plans and the Edinburgh Kiltwalk was cancelled. In its place, the Kiltwalk created their virtual Kiltwalk weekend, a weekend where they invited supporters to create their own challenge, (it doesn’t necessarily need to involve walking) and use their imaginations to raise funds for charities across Scotland.

As a team, we decided that this was an opportunity that we didn’t want to miss so we got our thinking caps on and designed a staff and volunteer challenge that could bring some of us together. We have decided to walk or run virtually from The Yard Edinburgh, to The Yard Fife, The Yard Dundee and back to The Yard Edinburgh. In total, we are covering 125 miles aiming to have completed it collectively by Sunday 13 September. We have eight members of staff taking part and two volunteers and from looking at our progress in the first few days – it looks like we might reach our 125 miles in the first week! Four days in, we have already completed 82.13 miles – dare I say that we might make it round twice!

The challenge has been a bit of a fun fitness challenge for some of us and it has been really lovely to see what others are doing during the day – plus it gives us all a bit of encouragement to get outside, staying as healthy and as active as possible. Alongside this, not having the physical Kiltwalk event this year has meant that we are have lost a significant amount of our community event income so this is also a brilliant way for us to raise some funds. Everything that is donated to the Kiltwalk gets topped up by 50% from the Hunter Foundation and we are already on track to our £1,000 target – having raised just over £500.

A massive thank you to everyone who has already sponsored us! If you would like to make a donation towards our challenge, we would really appreciate it. There are also still places in the virtual Kiltwalk this year so if you are feeling inspired by our challenge and would like to join - you can still sign up today!