Losing one colleague, friend and teacher in one year is tragic enough, but losing two in a matter of months has really shaken the KLB community.

Wanting to keep the memory of Nichala Gallivan and Vincent Le Goascoz alive has become very important to us, and creating a lasting memorial seems a fitting tribute to the impact they had on the school community in the years they were at KLB.

Mr Daniel secured a donation off four tickets from Cotswold Way Ultra Challenge and English teachers Miss Campion, Mrs Cornish, Mr Hopkins and Mr Morgan happily volunteered to take on this epic challenge. Although distances of 25km or 50km were available, the team decided this needed to be a challenge to raise maximum possible donations in memory of our wonderful Nichala and Vincent so they decided to take on the full 100km.

With only five weeks to prepare and faced with the prospect of walking the equivalent of two and a half marathons over two days with a total elevation of 2250m, it is fair to say that not as much training took place as they would have liked. As busy parents, all four found that home and school life created barriers to training opportunities. Miss Campion managed to walk home from KLB once a week, with her work laptop in her backpack, each walk home a mere five and a half hours at the end of a busy day!

The morning arrived and the fab four met in Cirencester to set off at 7.30am, armed with emergency blister plasters and smiles. Over the course of the weekend, the smiles never faltered, even though the need for the blister plasters grew. A cheer squad of KLB staff and family members met the challengers at various locations along the route, with some even walking multiple sections with them to help boost morale. Berkeley was very excited to join the team at Leighterton and walk to one of his favourite places – Westonbirt.

The fantastic four arrived back at Cirencester base camp on Sunday evening, just under 25 hours after they started walking. Considering they had only had a seven-hour gap between finishing the first day’s walk and starting the second day’s walk, during which they squeezed in a few precious hours’ sleep, this is very impressive.

Plans for the memorials for Nichala and Vincent are still in their infancy but we would like to thank those of you who have given so generously to this cause. Hearing updates on the total raised so far at different checkpoints really helped to spur our challengers on.

We would like to extend our thanks and gratitude to Ultra Challenge for donating the four tickets, to Mr Daniel for setting the challenge in motion and to our wonderful, strong and determined staff for bravely taking it on.

We are continuing to accept donations on the link below:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/MemorialforNichalaandVincent