Chris returns home to a hero’s welcome and another £11,000 for his fundraiser

Round Britain Walker Chris Jones has returned to a hero’s welcome in Lincolnshire to news of another £11,000 in donations and the achievement of gathering the largest-ever sum raised by one person in one endeavour for the Freemasons’ charity the MCF .

A donation of £10k from the Province and another of £1,000 from the Garthwaite Trust took his running total from his ‘On The Edge’ walk to more than £72,000 – with still more to be added to the total in the days ahead.

Almost 100 people turned out to the Long Sutton Masonic Hall – our closest to the Norfolk border – to welcome him home, drenched from the appalling weather – and having hopped a bus to be sure he could meet the 11am deadline. It prompted Garthwaite Trust Chairman Dave Pateman to say he should have got onto one of the double-deckers with a roof, rather than an open-topped one.

Provincial Grand Master Dave Wheeler presented Chris with the £10,000 boost on behalf of Lincolnshire Freemasons, with his comments recorded in the video on the Lincolnshire Freemasons YouTube channel here.

The walk will come to a formal end on Saturday December 14th at Skegness Masonic Hall, where it all began on New Year’s Day 2023. That’s when Chris will have completed the walking, and he’ll update his online fundraising page here .

Although the walking’s done, that’s just a signal for the n

ext phases of the endeavour, because the £100,00 ‘shoot for the moon’ fundraising target hasn’t yet been reached. Firstly there’s to be a more relaxed ‘Evening with Chris Jones’ with invitations being sent to the Provinces he’s visited on his travels. That’s just a concept at the moment, with details to be arranged in the new year.

In the meantime, Chris will be starting work on his book, with its unconfirmed working title of Back From The Edge. In it Chris will talk about the mental health challenges and the support he received from the MCF as the basis for him tackling the challenge in the first place, as well as the places he’s seen, the people he’s met, and the kindness he’s been shown on his travels. We’ll publish more details of that in due course as the flesh is put on the bones.

For now Chris is glad to be home with his family and sleeping in his own bed…