Dubbed the silly 6 by their students, 6 teachers took on the mammoth 36 hour challenge to raise money for Bower Grove school.
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00:00 Beth, Catherine, thank you so much for joining us. Glad you sat down, hope your legs are resting.
00:04 You're actually a third of the Silly Six. Tell me about the journey and also why the name?
00:12 Well, as one of the pupils on Friday realised, we actually are just ridiculous for doing this.
00:23 As we ran out to the field to say goodbye to everybody on Friday, we were all running in
00:28 different directions, not really knowing what was going on. I think silly because this was a brain
00:35 child of Beth. It was a corridor conversation one day, wouldn't it be brilliant to do something to
00:40 fundraise for school? What could we do? The idea to run to Paris came up and it seemed like a bit
00:48 of a silly idea, so hence the name Silly Six. Beth, the hope was to do it in 36 hours. What
00:54 was the timing at the end? Tell us where you started, where you ended up.
00:58 Yeah, the plan was 36 hours and we actually managed it in 33. We started at Valgrove,
01:06 which is obviously a maidstone, and we ran all the way to Folkestone and then from Dieppe to Paris
01:13 through really nice countryside, through lots of nice small villages in Sommery,
01:20 and then ended up here at the Eiffel Tower all together within the 33 hours.
01:24 Was there any point of regret for both of you? Did you ever think,
01:28 I don't know if I could do this, did you ever doubt your ability or was it pretty plain sailing?
01:33 Was it comfortable? I suppose if you did it with three hours to spare, pretty athletic.
01:38 It definitely was a challenge for everybody. There were definite moments where all of us
01:48 needed a bit of a pick me up and we all had to support each other and really be a team to push
01:55 each other onwards. There were definite periods of doubting. Probably we'd all trained really,
01:59 really hard. Everybody had put in a lot of hours to make sure that the running side of things,
02:04 and we also, whilst one person was running, another person was always on the bike. So you
02:08 always had a partner to support you and talk you through and keep you going and have a chat or tell
02:15 you that you were doing great. But we really needed that. I think the thing that got to all
02:22 of us and shocked us all was the exhaustion side of things. Because although we had a break,
02:28 we did it as a relay, there were times, and actually we didn't sleep for that 33 hours.
02:35 I don't think anybody got any sleep at all. So it was pretty much being awake for 33 hours.
02:41 So that was the thing that really got to all of us and exhausted us. And the fatigue was the
02:48 hardest thing, I think. I can imagine. Well, you're speaking
02:50 pretty coherently to us now. So I hope you've had lots of rest. Beth, I suppose another huge part
02:56 of this is what you're doing it for. That's a huge driving force, of course. So tell us
03:01 where the money's going to go that you've raised. I believe you nearly got to a target of £7,000
03:06 now. Yeah, we're really close to target. We are an SEMH school in Maidstone. So all of our pupils
03:14 have EHCPs. And for us, we wanted to throw a massive arts festival for them. We've held two
03:22 previously. And the impact it has on the pupils is incredible for the children who wouldn't usually
03:30 get to experience live music and the festival acts that we have in. So we wanted to raise as
03:37 much money as possible so that we could have the biggest and best festival yet. And that's where
03:43 the driving force behind it, to give our pupils that experience of culture, of music.
03:49 Being so close to target is crazy. I mean, we wouldn't have been able to do that without
03:55 so many of our sponsors. We've had donations, big and small, from friends, family, strangers,
04:01 people we don't even know, lots of pupils and families. But we've got six main sponsors who,
04:07 without them, we wouldn't be able to run the festival. And Beth, this was your idea. So
04:12 what's next for the Silly Six? Well, you say that. Lots of sleep, lots of recovery. But I have
04:20 already said I can't wait to get the trainers back on and go back out running. I'm just going
04:25 to give the other five a little rest before I drag them into something else. I think we can do it in
04:31 a less amount of hours. Yeah, I don't know. I think there'll be something again. I just need
04:36 to work on some of them. Yeah. So watch this. And you're not stopping there. Hopefully it can
04:42 become something like the Silly Sixty and you can get 60 different teachers doing it. I think there's
04:47 more people you could drag into it, I'm sure. That would be amazing. I think our real hope at
04:54 the moment is that before we get to our arts festival, which will be in the summer term,
04:59 we'd really like to hit our £7,000 target. So we're so close to that. So we're just trying to
05:06 ask anybody else who fancies sponsoring us on our GoFundMe page, through the Facebook page,
05:14 it would be amazing if we can get to £7,000. It'd be incredible. Well, thank you so much for
05:19 joining us. Congratulations to all six of you and the whole school behind you as well. Thank
05:24 you so much for speaking with us. Thank you.