What an exciting evening that was! Not for the faint hearted, the Heart of Kent Hospice organised a charity fire walking event! How and why doesn’t everyone get burnt? I don’t get it but I wasn’t intrigued enough to give it a go myself! I was more than happy to capture the event rather than take part in this one.
There was an hours training for the participants before they got their turn to walk on fire. Scott, who runs the event is a two times Guinness world record holder for the longest walk on fire and he did admit that his feet did get quite warm on that occasion!
I had wondered how they were going to light the fire in Maidstone High street. The team from UKFireWalk were very organised and everything has been meticulously planned. A bed of turf had been laid down on welding sheets, to light the fire on, which protected the pavement from getting damaged.
After the training, the 50 fire walkers emerged into the cold night air and removed their shoes and socks to stand on the -10 degree cold pavement. A bit of a contrast to the hot coals which were measured to be at a toasty 523 degrees!
All of the participants walked over the coals successfully, most of them managed to do it a couple of times. If it looked like the coals were dying down a bit and might be cooling off, then the team from UKFirewalk, would re-rake some fresh coals over the bed to keep them really hot.
At the end of the event the participants were awarded their certificates by the Deputy Mayor of Maidstone, councillor xxx. This great evening raised over £11.5k for the Hospice which was a really great amount of money to help the Hospice deliver their wonderful services.
The event was also kindly sponsored by Samsian, central heating and gas engineers. They had their very smart Land Rover Defender in attendance to help show their support.
