Do you think you could walk the length of the Island... all with a leg tied to someone else?
That's what Andy McMillan and Graham Wright are doing today (31 August), all in aid of charity Depaul UK, which helps young people all over the UK who are homeless, at risk and disadvantaged.
Siobhán Fletcher gave them a call to find out more.
Hi, it's Siobhan, one of the journalists up at Monks Radio, and welcome to the latest edition of our newscast. Now you've heard of the parish walk, you've heard of the TT, you've heard about the coast to coast walk, you've also heard of school sports days, so the egg and spoon race, the sack race, that sort of thing. What about the three-legged race? Were you ever any good at that? Well here at Monks Radio, we always encourage you to get in touch with any community news you may have, and at 20 to 6 this morning, that's the 31st of August 2024. We got an email into the newsroom from a guy called Andy McMillan, him and his friend Graham Wright are currently walking in the length of the Isle of Man, and if that wasn't hard enough, they've decided to do it with a leg tied together to represent our flag. They're hoping to raise money for a charity called DePaul UK, and I gave Andy a call this morning when they weren't too far away from the point of air to find out more. Yeah, so I'm Andy McMillan, who's Graham Wright, who's my buddy, and yeah, we're walking, well, three-legged walking in the length of the island. And so, explain to me that, well, I feel like the three legs is probably quite self-explanatory, but why have you decided to do this challenge in particular? It's a good question. I mean, I don't have a great answer to be honest, so we like doing lots of city adventures, and we've kind of looked at different parts of the UK, and we've kind of cycled across the lengths of them or, you know, widths of them. We'd looked at the Isle of Man for a while and thought there's a challenge to do there, but what? Yeah, a few years ago, we realised the flag made it very obvious what we needed to do. It's a three-legged Isle of Man. And yeah, we've kind of just been thinking about it for a while, decided we should just book it. So, I mean, literally, about two days ago, we booked our hotel, put the charity donation page up and went for it, and, you know, we like raising money for charity, we like doing kind of silly things and kind of, you know, trying to do what we can, so yeah, it should be a bit of fun. This is awesome. So you've started all the way up north. We're about to just start today, and where's the end goal? Yeah, so we started from, I think it's called the Point of Air Lighthouse, so up north, we're currently heading to Ramsey, we're then heading up, climbing up the Snafell, I think it's called. So we've got a fair bit of elevation to do today, about 2,000 feet of it. We then, I think, working our way down past Port of Aaron, and then we end on like the southern sort of tip, which is, I think, there's a cafe called Sound Cafe down there, which is kind of where we're heading to. Whereabouts in the UK are you from? So we're, well, we both grew up in Brighton together with schoolmates. I live in London. He actually lived in Berlin, so he flew from Berlin to go to my house the night before last to get the flight over here. This is mega. All right, well, this is awesome. And I loved your description of the Isle of Man there, so it's so someone who's just visited for the first time, like, I think we started at the point of there, and I think we're heading to Port of Aaron. Yeah, when you get to the sound of it's still open when you get down there, you've got to get the Guinness cake. I recommend that for you. Oh, we're definitely going to need some of that. We're going to need some supplies and food. Yeah. That's your aim. You've got to get there before it shuts, so you can get the Guinness cake in. We'll try our best. And what charity are you trying to raise money for today? Yeah, it's a charity called DePaul, UK. So it's a charity that's trying to help people with children with homelessness and kind of issues around homelessness. So it's a really, really good charity. It's quite a small one. So it's nice to kind of try and raise some funds for smaller charities, I think. They're doing really good things. And yeah, we're just doing what we can. So, you know, if anyone does want to donate, we'd be very, very grateful. Or just, you know, if you see us on our travels, give us a thumbs up and away. But to donate, it's just go fund me 8th forward slash three legged men. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radio podcasts at your favourite podcast provider. So our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. [MUSIC] You
