Kenton Kids travel equivalent of Devon to Oz in an attempt raise bucks bogs!

Children from a small village Primary School in Kenton, Devon, have collectively cycled, scooted, run, walked, roller skated, kyaked and swum 9190 miles! The total is the distance from the school in Kenton, all the way to a school in Bunbury, Australia. 

The virtual journey started on Saturday 1st August, and will finish this Thursday 17th December at 4pm, when the children will cross a finish line together (socially distanced) at Powderham Castle, which is also in the village of Kenton. 

The journey has seen 31 children from the school ages 3-11, clock up their weekly miles, which were then added together and plotted on a huge map in Parent and Organiser Alex Mitchelmore’s home. The parents calculated their children’s miles using smart watches and pedometers, sending the total miles in each week, along with pictures of their activities, and have been asking friends and relatives to sponsor them in order to raise funds to build much needed toilets at the site of their school playing fields.

Being such a small school - there is no playing field attached to the old school building, and the children have to make a 5 minute walk, crossing the very busy A379 to the local playing field, each time they go for their P.E lessons. The children and teachers walk in a crocodile formation as a group, with the children in pairs, making it impossible for the children or staff to nip back to the toilet at the school. The children have had to perfect the art of “wild weeing”, but it is far from ideal! 

Over the past couple of years the school and its very pro-active Parent Association, have raised over £4,000, which so far has been used to level and re-turf the field which was on a slope. Now the children are desperate (pun intended) to raise the £6,000 required so that they can pee in a bog, and not a bush! A Go Fund Me page called “Journey 2 Oz 4 bogs not bushes!” has been set up, and currently the children have raised £845. 

The children have also recorded a video of themselves singing along to Queen’s “I want to ride my Bicycle” with most of them donning fake Freddie Mercury moustaches. They even persuaded The Earl Of Devon, Charlie Courtenay to brush off his Yellow Freddie Jacket and perform a cameo roll at the end of the video, for which he shaved his beard into a genuine Freddie Moustache, and took his mountain bike up onto the buttresses of Powderham Castle! The Earl and Countesses' children are both former pupils of the school, and the Powderham Estate donated the land on which the toilets are to be built.

In a year when the children had so much taken away from them, this has given them something very real, and healthy to focus on, and to stay positive for. Many of the children have gone out of their way to clock up weekly miles, going out in all weathers, and have really amazed their parents, and themselves with what they have achieved together.

If you would like to help the children from Kenton Primary School raise the funds for their new loos, please donate at: https://uk.gofundme.com/f/journey-2-oz-4-bogs-not-bushes