3 Dads Walking 2024 Day 24 - Litcham to Taverham

The penultimate day started with a group already waiting for us in Litcham. The closer to the end the larger the number of people who want to join us from the start including Ed from Radio Norfolk who interviewed us all as we walked along.

After leaving the village our route went along the B1145, a straight road with fast cars...not a pleasant couple of miles. We had to keep everyone going at a swift pace to get us across this challenging bit of the route.

From Mileham we turned towards Bittering and Gressenhall where the staff at the Farm and Workhouse Museum welcomed us in and offered us refreshments and shade from the sun. Alison from the BBC was there to do short interviews that will be used to support our arrival in Norwich tomorrow.

At Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum

The highlight of the day, and possibly the entire walk, came when we walked past Swanton Morley Primary School – the entire school came out to cheer us! All the children wanted high-fives and the staff reassured us that we were doing the right thing in calling for suicide prevention to be added to the school curriculum.

A reminder – suicide is the biggest killer of under 35s in the UK; not knife crime, not drugs, not road traffic accidents, not cancer....it’s themselves – to suicide.

If suicide is the biggest risk to our young people why don’t we talk to them about it?

Not talking them about the thing most likely to kill them is completely stupid.

We stopped shortly after the school, Kate at the Darbys Pub allowed us and our group of over 30 people to use her beer garden for our lunch stop. As well as giving us use of her space her team came out with trays of food. Another manifestation of spontaneous generosity. This was replicated further along our way in Elsing when Abbi made sure anyone walking with us was able to refill water bottles and use the loos in The Lemon and Rosemary Yard her deli.

During the day the number of people walking with us never went below 20 and at times reached 35 – it made quite a sight walking across the Norfolk countryside. All these people had been touched by suicide, many were suicide-bereaved parent and all of them wanted to make a change so that we can prevent suicides in the future.

We got everyone safely onto the Marriott’s Way, an old railway line now a multi-user track. This gave us a six-mile, straightforward finish to our end point at Taverham.

Yet again, another very special day.