Claire's marathon walk for sailors

A Warrington woman is walking more than 200 miles along the Trans Pennine Trail to support a world voyage for disabled sailors.
Following hard on the heels of the spotlight falling on the world’s inspirational Paralympic athletes, Claire Smith, 38, is walking the Trans Pennine Trail to raise money to help disabled people fulfil their dream of sailing a tall ship to far-flung parts of the globe.
“From sea to sea with a bump in the middle” is how Claire describes her 215 mile route which she also admits will be a huge challenge to her mind and her body.
Claire will set off this Saturday, September 8, to walk from Southport to Hornsea, a journey which she plans to complete in 12 days.
She has already had £750 match funded by Barclays Bank, but Claire’s efforts are set to raise several thousand pound in total. The money will go towards supporting a groundbreaking world voyage by a wheelchair accessible tall ship via such remote places as Cape Horn and Tristan da Cunha.
Claire chose to walk from coast to coast because she wanted the sea to feature in the challenge. Claire first sailed on the fully accessible tall ship Lord Nelson, operated by the Jubilee Sailing Trust, in 1993 because she wanted to learn more about living and working with disabled people. Named after Britain’s most famous disabled sailor and
launched in 1986, the 55m Lord Nelson is the first tall ship in the world ever to have been built to enable physically disabled and able-bodied people to sail side by side as equals.
Lord Nelson leaves her home port of Southampton on Trafalgar Day (October 21) this year to become the first ever fully accessible tall ship to sail around the globe crewed by people with a variety of physical and sensory disabilities, including wheelchair users. The journey will be an extraordinary campaign of human endeavour and achievement.
The circumnavigation will take 23 months, visit more than 30 countries in all seven continents and comprise ten ocean passages crewed by different groups of people from the UK and around the world.
Claire said: “While the Paralympics may be bringing people from all over the globe to the UK to show the world what they can do, Lord Nelson will be taking the message
of inclusion and achievement back out to all corners of the globe. I wanted to do something to help and the money I raise will go towards enabling a wheelchair-user to fulfil the dream of their life. Everywhere the ship goes, she will be an ambassador for inclusion and diversity for what can be achieved.
“I am not disabled myself, but the blisters I am getting and the fatigue from all the training is a huge personal challenge, and reminds me of what it is like, and how fulfilling it will be, to achieve something that at first seems out of reach. Many disabled people think that ocean passages on a tall ship are out of their reach and I am setting out to prove that anyone can do anything they set their minds to.”
To support Claire and her fundraising efforts, please visit her page www.justgiving.com/Claire-Smith29