On Saturday 4th September at 5am, team members from local marketing agency Blue Bee set off to complete a 52-mile trek from Salisbury to Winchester, and back again, to raise funds for Salisbury Hospice charity.

The team completed the Clarendon Way walk between Salisbury and Winchester, twice in a single day totalling 52 miles. So far, the team have raised over £2,200 for the Salisbury Hospice Charity.

Every year, Salisbury Hospice provides specialist palliative care to 1,000 local people with life-limiting conditions. It costs £2.4 million to run the hospice annually, and less than 45% is funded by the NHS. As a charity, they aim to raise £1.5 million each year towards these costs to ensure vital services continue.

The Blue Bee team have previously raised funds for the hospice after choosing to ‘adopt’ the charity and make Salisbury Hospice the focus of their fundraising efforts.

In 2019, the team jumped out of a plane with the Red Devils from up to 15,000 feet and team member Mark Jackson took on a trek to Kilimanjaro, on a self-funded trip, reaching the summit and making sure all donations went to the charity.

The Blue Bee team are immensely proud of their achievement, having started training a few months ago to prepare for the intense trek.

Company director and head of agency Luke Hopkins said: “It was a fantastic effort by the team. Their strength, endurance and also support for each other along the way, is a great reflection of how they operate as a team, inside and outside of work. It really was a gruelling walk and many of us are still recovering, but it is all for a good cause and we want to thank everyone who has donated so far”.

But the fundraising doesn’t stop there.

Mark Jackson has been planning another mountain climbing trip which was postponed due to the pandemic. Mark plans to self-fund another climb, this time travelling to Everest base camp in Nepal, which will see him take on 14 days of trekking over a 130km distance and enduring conditions that include 50% less oxygen, no contact with the outside world and a strictly vegetarian diet for two weeks.

The rescheduled dates for the trip are now February 2022 and Blue Bee continue to raise funds for the Salisbury Hospice online via their Virgin Money Giving fundraising page here.

You can follow Blue Bee on social media to follow their fundraising efforts.