n Saturday March 11th a group of young people, along with Ken Lynch, Bridget Smith and Sebastian Kindersley, slept out at Biggleswade bus shelter.
This was in aid of raising funds for our much awaited skate park and for Milton Children’s Hospice.
It was a very cold night and from what I can gather, quite adventurous.
I would like to thank Abbey Corrugated for supplying cardboard to sleep on; Ken Lynch for his never ending support in what we do; James Clements of James Brickwork for his time and his truck; Sebastian for believing in us enough to join us; Bridget Smith who will always be my heroine; and last but by no means least, the young people, with whom I feel proud and privileged to work alongside.
The amount raised has not yet been finalised but a third will go to Milton Children’s Hospice.
The youth sleeping out were: Gareth Evans, Ed Peers, Hattie Peers, Luke Janes, Adam Janes, Laurence Smith, Henry Dempsey, Mel Currell, Tom Currell, Tom Newman.
On Saturday, 11th March a group of very brave youngsters and not so brave adults from Gamlingay volunteered to ‘sleep rough’ at Biggleswade Bus Shelter in order to raise money for the planned Gamlingay Skate Park (see March issue of the Gazette for more details). The ten teenagers were chaperoned by our own District Councillor Sebastian Kindersley; Bridget Smith from Forward Gamlingay! and Ken Lynch who is working with the youngsters to turn the Skatepark into reality. The venture raised over £1,000 on what turned out to be one of the coldest nights of the year (2 degrees centigrade with a hard frost) and if you have ever wondered what Biggleswade town centre is like on a typical Saturday night, read on…
“The night began at 9 o’clock when I arrived at Biggleswade Bus Station, having followed the gritter lorry from Gamlingay, to find Ken busy laying out double sheets of cardboard for us all to sleep on. I had been led to believe that we would be under cover, but of course we weren’t. Our beds were laid on the none too clean pavement, under a bit of over hanging roof with the full glare of the security lights shining down on us (all night). The 10 young people who had volunteered, probably more willingly than I, to spend the night outside in the middle of winter arrived laden with sleeping bags, inflatable chairs and huge amounts of food. In no time at all they had devoured most of it followed by bags of chips, gallons of coke and tons of sweets.
Biggleswade proved to be a most interesting and lively place on a Saturday night. We had loads of visitors, all of them extremely drunk, but they were all interested in what we were doing and many gave us money. A taxi driver even gave us chocolates. Some people had heard the youngsters being interviewed on the radio in the morning and had staggered out of the pubs especially to see us. The drunker ones even offered to join us until they realised just how cold it was.
Sebastian turned up at 11pm masquerading as a Russian in an enormous hat and clasping down filled booties. I now have to eat my own fleecy hat as I dared doubt that he would go through with it. Sorry Sebastian!
We did have a succession of sober visitors from Gamlingay and Papworth bearing food and drink and the local police patrolled regularly to make sure we were still alive and stopping to have a chat (from the warmth of their car!).
It was VERY cold. Toe numbingly cold.
The young people were fabulous – high spirited, very lively, great fun to be with and completely tireless. I did suggest at about 3 o’clock that this was meant to be a SLEEP over but that only stimulated them into a sleeping bag race along the road. Most settled down about 4 am but I strongly suspect that Tom and Henry never went to sleep. By 6 am they were refreshed and ready to face the day and devour the bacon rolls which had arrived with Hayley and Pauline. It was extremely cold and uncomfortable but great fun. Ken’s next fund raising plan is a parachute jump which I shall definitely NOT be doing. Any volunteers?”
