“A couple of hours sponsored walking can make a massive difference to Bowel Cancer UK”

Garry Azzaro, from London, shares how he, his wife Lucy and friend Roxy took on the Walk Together challenge after Garry’s own experience of bowel cancer.

It was my wife, Lucy, who first brought Bowel Cancer UK’s Walk Together campaign to my attention. In June 2021, I was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer – thankfully, it was caught in time, and after surgery and some preventative chemotherapy I am now clear. I’m also in a five-year Open Access Follow-up Recovery programme with the NHS.

During my treatment, my wife consulted the Bowel Cancer UK forums regularly for help and advice, which proved insightful as well as invaluable. After a very stressful 12 months, the Walk Together campaign felt like a chance to say ‘thank you’ to the charity and give something back. A birthday fundraiser we had held through social media in October had already raised an amazing £1,107, but we knew more support was needed for this amazing charity. My wife and I both signed up, and after mentioning it one evening to our friend, Roxy, we were surprised and delighted to find out shortly afterwards that she had signed up too and was going to join us.

We planned a five-mile route taking us from Clapham to Hammersmith, picking two spots that were well-known to us as our start and finish lines. With little time available to get the necessary permissions to collect donations as we walked, Bowel Cancer UK provided us with a QR code to display, so that any passers-by could scan it and be taken directly to the JustGiving page.

Lucy and I met our friend Roxy at the starting point, along with two other friends who had decided to join us on the walk as moral support, which was most welcome. We had planned strategic rest-points along the way for breaks (this also gave us a mini ‘captive-audience’ to see the QR code and shirts). This was to prove the most incredible experience of the walk. We met people who stopped to congratulate us, thank us and tell us their stories and experiences with bowel cancer, from their own scares, their personal losses, and one incredible man who called us over to thank us, telling us how he’d been a survivor of the disease. He was now nine years all clear and wept as he told us his story and thanked us for raising awareness. By the end of that, we were all weeping!

We finally completed our walk along the riverbank in Hammersmith after taking our route past Charing Cross Hospital, where I had received my preventative chemotherapy treatment only months before. The finish point was lined with friends waiting to greet and congratulate us. It had only taken a couple of hours, but the support and emotional journeys along the way were something special, and we all felt proud that we’d done something great. At last count, the fundraising totals between Lucy, Roxy and myself, after adding in Gift Aid donations, came to over £2,600. This was a very successful amount that we were all incredibly thankful for.

I really do recommend doing the Walk Together challenge. Whether you’ve suffered with bowel cancer, know somebody who has, have lost somebody, or even have no experience of it at all and just want to do something to help! A couple of hours sponsored walking can make a massive difference to Bowel Cancer UK.

Some top tips for anybody thinking of doing it:

• Take plenty of water with you. We had glorious weather, so hydration was key.
• Ask friends if they’d like to sign up with you – it’s good to have some support along the way, and they can help raise more money.
• You may like to arrange strategic rest points as we did, it’s a great way to give people a chance to chat about their experiences.
• Wear some comfortable, supportive footwear. It’s only five miles, but if you’re in a busy city like we were, that’s a lot of concrete to pound.
• Ask your employer if they have an employee charity-donation scheme. Mine did, and they contributed to Bowel Cancer UK after my walk. At the very least, you can ask colleagues to sponsor you – every penny helps!
• Have fun! You’re doing something incredible that will help thousands of people every day, how fantastic is that?!

Feeling inspired by Garry’s story? Sign up to one of our fundraising challenges today!