A nine-year-old boy has completed a “midnight march” around central London for 12 hours to raise money for a children’s hospital.
Barney Thomas, from Bristol, was joined by his father, Darren Thomas (36) and his godfather, Bradley Hackett (36) as the trio walked around central London from 6pm on Friday evening to 6am on Saturday morning.
Barney said the hardest part of the challenge was having sore feet but added he felt “joyous” at being able to fundraise for Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, raising more than £1,700 so far.
The “midnight march” was their fourth fundraising venture for the hospital and its connected charities after Barney was born with two holes in his heart.
He had an operation when he was 11 months old to seal the holes and has continued to give back to the hospital with his charitable efforts.
“I feel tired but proud that we’ve done it – I feel joyous,” Barney told the PA news agency.
“My feet hurt and it was a little bit tiring, but it was OK.”
The trio set off from London’s Paddington station on Friday evening, walking to places such as Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Tower Bridge before catching the first train home on Saturday morning.
Mr Thomas, an operations manager for Network Rail, said Barney fell asleep within “about 30 seconds” of sitting down on the train home.
Mr Thomas said he felt “elated” following the challenge: “When we got back to Paddington I saw we were really close to the goal of £1,500 – when we got back to Bristol we had hit it and I had a bit of a tear in my eye.
“I was really elated by the whole thing, I felt chuffed.”
He also said that it was a “really good thing” to do with his son.
“I look back to when he was really ill when he was little and now we do this every year, it’s something to always look forward to,” he said.
Barney used a GoPro camera to film the entire walk, creating a timelapse which Mr Thomas later posted to Instagram.
Mr Thomas said he has “loads” of blisters following the challenge, adding that both his and Barney’s feet hurt by around 3am.
“(Barney’s) feet hurt and he was a little bit tired but I showed him how much we’d raised and said we had to keep going,” he said.
“It was so motivating to see how many people had donated, we didn’t expect to raise that much.”
