Melton man completes amazing 576-mile charity challenge in a day

The 50-year-old covered 576 miles in 11-and-a-half hours, also visiting Brussels in Belgium, the French capital of Paris and also London, travelling on trains in between.

He raised £5,000 for the charity, Hope for Justice, and achieved his aim of raising awareness of the issue of the trafficking and slavery of human beings.

The challenge was designed to illustrate how easy it is to move people across several countries in a short space of time.

Members of Melton Running Club and the town’s Stilton Striders joined him in his final 10km, which started shortly after 9pm outside the borough council offices in Parkside.

Andrew told the Melton Times: “All the trains ran on time which was the most important thing for me to complete it all on the same day.

“The running was fine but tiredness was a problem because I hardly slept at all after starting out at midnight.

“Paris was probably the toughest one because it was warm and there were a lot of pedestrians getting in the way.

“There were about 60 people running with me on the Melton run and I want to thank them for getting involved.”

The logistics of Andrew’s challenge are bewildering.

After running the Amsterdam 10km, he caught the 5.55am train to Brussels, arriving at 9.12am.

He started running in the Belgian capital around 40 minutes later and finished in time to catch the 11.13am to Paris.

Arriving at 12.35pm, Andrew was off and running within 10 minutes, giving himself a little break after that one before hopping on the 4.04pm Channel Tunnel service to London.

Trains continued to run smoothly, delivering him in time to run through the capital at 5.45pm.

Then it was just a matter of catching the 7.33pm train to Grantham, which gave him the half-an-hour needed to get to Melton and the final leg of his epic journey.

Andrew, who is married to Caroline and the father of Tom (18) and 16-year-old Maddie, raises money every year for Hope for Justice, which has been operating for a decade in a bid to end modern day slavery, rescuing hundreds of people, including babies and adults up to the age of 63.

He added: “I wanted to show how easy it is for a person to move or be moved, from city to city and fron country to country.

“A lot of people think slavery was a problem in the past but there are more slaves today than before William Wilberforce helped abolish slavery in 1807 and it can also be a local issue as well as one which happens abroad.”

The fundraising total was boosted by Sharon Mee and the Barclays matched funding scheme while Melton Sports owner, Michael Cooke, donated a pair of sports headphones as one of the prizes for a raffle which helped swell funds raised.

Go online to www.justgiving.com/fundraising/andrewwrath50 to donate money to Andrew’s fundraising effort.