On Friday 16th September 2016, I will aim to travel by train to every railway station in the county of Lancashire, in under 24 hours.
A journey of hundreds of miles; the “Lancashire Challenge” is my latest fundraiser for St. John’s Hospice in Lancaster. I hope you will support me and donate to the Hospice, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
In 2015, I completed a similar challenge, when I visited all 270 London Underground stations in 20 hours 8 minutes. That sowed the seed for "The Lancashire Challenge". I began to wonder if something similar could be done around the county of Lancashire. I asked a friend to put a route together for me and we soon discovered that although there are a lot less stations, it is actually even more difficult, as there are less trains and the stations are spread far and wide. Some stations are only served by trains once or twice a day.
Lancashire has 62 railway stations and I have applied the same rules used on the Tube challenge for this latest venture:
> we must visit each station on a scheduled passenger service.
> we can also travel between stations on foot or by public transport – but not by car, taxi or bicycle.
The route we’ve put together depends on a lot of luck and most of the services running on time. I’m hoping we don’t get any delays, or the day could be severely curtailed!
I will be joined by BBC Radio Lancashire on this epic journey and they will be broadcasting updates throughout the day.
As far as I know, this has never been done before. I mean, why would you? I am aware that it’s a slightly strange thing to attempt, but I am really looking forward to seeing if I can do it and then maybe others will then try to beat my time?
I will post updates on the day on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/david.chandler.5876) and Twitter (@dchan52169) and will let you know on this page how we get on!
Thank you for your support for St. John's Hospice, who do such wonderful work.
