Julian Goode walked 500 miles in six weeks coast-to-coast across Wales, Northern Ireland, England and Scotland to raise money for Barts Charity and Anthony Nolan – trekking through his 'A Really Goode Walk' during October and November 2022.

Julian was diagnosed with Leukaemia on May 2, 2019. To be precise - BCR-ABL Mixed Phenotype Acute Leukaemia (MPAL) Blast Crisis CML (Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia).

To be blunt, if it wasn’t for the amazing staff at Barts in London, and Anthony Nolan, I wouldn’t be here now and able to take on A Really Goode Walk in autumn 2022.

Fairly early on during my first seven-week stint of chemotherapy in St Bartholomew's Hospital I came up with a rough idea of doing a sponsored walk post-recovery, to give something back to Barts via their charity.

Further down the line that year, thanks to Anthony Nolan and their stem cell register an anonymous donor was found for a stem cell transplant – and they were swiftly added to the charity walk beneficiaries.

Since 2019 my sponsored walk plan has evolved lots of times. Finally coming up with the concept of walking coast-to-coast across all four countries of the United Kingdom – simply because it seemed novel, I couldn’t see that anyone else had done it, and it sounded like a fun adventure and a necessary amount of challenge to make the fundraising worthwhile – I had to plump for a route, or rather four routes.

After numerous discarded ideas, National Trails were chosen across Wales and England – the Offa’s Dyke Path and Hadrian’s Wall Path respectively – and the central Scotland trail The John Muir Way. Northern Ireland was a bit more of a challenge in terms of route-planning, but the coastal touch points were identified in the south east and north west of the country (Kilkeel and Londonderry), and the exact route could wait.

Fortuitously, the mileage total of the whole lot came to a satisfyingly round 500 miles. And that just left a six-week block to find to actually do it – and the Covid pandemic didn’t help in that respect. Put off in 2020 and 2021, an October start in 2022 was eventually put into the calendar.