How it all began
HOW IT BEGAN
In the early 1970’s while serving with the British Army in Germany Glen Moulds (founder) entered and completed the famous Nijmegan Marches several times. These 4 day walks have been going for 96 years and is the world’s largest walking event with over 40,000 entrants.
After Glen turned 50 he was looking for a personal challenge and remembered the Nijmegan Marches, so, with permission from the Nijmegan Committee he copied the 4 day walks starting and finishing from his own built sports facility The Academy Health & Fitness Centre in the village of Barrow, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk where he also lives. The Great Barrow Walk was born in 2008.
In 2009 and 2010 there were just the 4 days of walking either 6, 10, 15 or the full 26 miles each day organized and run by Glen and two friends Richard Ford and Melissa Spencer. The walks were a success and numbers started to grow. The reason for adding the smaller walks was to encourage people who had not walked before to challenge themselves and gradually increase their distances.
At the end of 2010 Glen was approached by several friends James Heath a triathlete from Barrow and Glenn Morris a cyclist from Bury St Edmunds to add ‘running’ and ‘cycling’ to the event which Glen agreed and therefore changed the name to its current name The Great Barrow Challenge. James joined the GBC team and things started moving fast!
Adding the running was no real problem as they would use the same 16 routes as the walkers, with 4 full marathon distances ‘back to back’ across multi terrain, this became one of the hardest 4 day running events in the Uk. However, the cycle event was to prove a lot more difficult. It was decided that to make this as difficult a challenge as the walks and the runs the main distance would have to be 125 miles per day with the other options of 30 and 60 miles. The next challenge was to recce and establish 860 miles of safe but challenging cycle routes. This was done by the team and now was the additional challenge of signposting the route and converting the route to gpx files so they could be downloaded onto Garmins and other such equipment.
Team GBC
From Left to Right:
John Evans GBC Photographer, James Heath Triathlete (i.c Running) and Glen Moulds (Founder) & Glenn Morris
It is Glen’s ambition is to make these challenges one of the largest sporting challenges in the UK with 10,000 entries. He has secured a further 4.5 acres of land for car parking and camping.
In July 2011 Glen and the team founded the GBC Christmas, Spring and Summer challenges with either one or two day events throughout the year to encourage people to keep up their challenge activities and also get together to celebrate with friends.
The Great Barrow Challenge is one of the most extreme personal challenge events in the UK and the GBC team looks forward to welcoming each and every entrant to challenge themselves in a very friendly and family orientated environment.
Good Luck!
(Picture below shows Glen as a young soldier (far left) completing Nijmegan in 1977 (Walker number H40385-017)
