Weekend of walks for London's Air Ambulance Charity.

​Since 1989, London’s Air Ambulance Charity has been providing a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year, advanced trauma service to London’s most injured patients, the first such service in the UK to carry a senior doctor on board, as well as paramedics. 

Dr. Richard Earlam founded the charity (which works alongside the NHS) in response to a report documenting the number of trauma patients that died needlessly due to the delay in getting them prompt and appropriate medical assistance.

Today, London’s Air Ambulance Charity serves a population of 10 million people in Greater London, responding to an average of five patients a day and reaching any scene within 11 minutes of receiving the call. They effectively take the hospital to the patient and can perform life saving procedures such as open heart surgery and blood transfusions at the roadside; procedures normally only found in an emergency room. The quick intervention and the incredibly high level of medical assistance they provide means that the patients they attend have not only the best chance of survival, but the best quality of life after trauma.

​As you can probably guess, most of the incidents that London’s Air Ambulance Charity attend to are road traffic collisions, the rail network, industrial accidents, falls from a great height unfortunately, a growing number of stabbings and shootings. 

The two MD902 explorer twin engine helicopters operate from 8:00am until sunset when rapid response vehicles take over the night duties. The cost of running this service is £15 million a year. The helicopters are coming to the end of their life and another £15 million is needed to replace them but have until September to raise it. London’s Air Ambulance Charity appeal is called ‘Up Against Time’ and this year I’ve decided to see if I can raise a little bit of awareness about them and what they do, but also the fact that they’re a charity. They are completely reliant on donations …from the very people they serve.

​At the start of the year, I set up a subscription channel on my Bowl of Chalk Instagram page, where for a whopping 0.99p a month you get (aside from my regular Fun London Facts) other content such as explorations of different areas of London, museums you might have never heard of and a couple of different series’; one which involves my collection of vintage London postcards and another called ‘London in Lyrics’, looking at songs that have been inspired or been influenced by London. Half of the money I receive each month from the subscription is going to London’s Air Ambulance Charity, but I wanted to do a bit more.

On the 27th and 28th of July, I’ll be doing 24 hours of London walking tours over the two days (because LAA are a 24-hour service). I will be starting in Victoria at 9am on the Saturday and doing a continuous route (just over 20 miles) through the capital in a series of back-to-back 1.5 hour walks (12 hours each day) which will end at approximately 10pm on the Sunday evening in Whitechapel outside the Royal London Hospital where the London’s Air Ambulance Charity have their helipad. 

​I’d be delighted if you could join me. There are 8 walks each day and tickets are £20 per person. Aside from a small admin fee which goes to Eventbrite, all of the money raised through ticket sales will be going to London’s Air Ambulance Charity ‘Up Against Time’ appeal. The plan is that people can join for one section of the walk (or more if you’d like), then where one walk finishes, the next will start …and so on. You can find all the walks listed using the link below, and you can book directly through Eventbrite. I look forward to meeting you at the end of July as we explore London together whilst trying to raise some funds for London’s Air Ambulance Charity.

BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE