All fired up for charity

Almost a hundred people had gathered to see and cheer on those brave enough — including me — to take on a scary-looking fire walk organised by Rotherham Hospital and Community Charity on Monday

It was chilly outside Rotherham Golf Club but the fire bed was hot enough — above 500 deg C hot, in fact.

“Why would you choose to walk over something that hot?” you might wonder.

It’s a really good question — it looked terrifying at first and I sure did have second thoughts.

“How mad should you be to walk on that?” — should be your second question.

The answer was, having seen the process of making the trail for us, really mad, Crazy, in fact.

However, we had a Guinness World Record fire-walker to warm us up.

Scott Bell holds the record for walking the longest distance — 100 metres\!q — over fire and made sure we were loose before the big event.

He’s properly mad, I’m not going to lie.

You must be, I think, if your job is to basically to walk on hot coal and wood, and to help hundreds of thousands of people to follow suit.

We appreciated Scott’s energy — he talked a lot about what to do and what to avoid out there.

It’s important to pay attention — blisters on the feet are no joke, and you don’t want to end up in the hospital with pitch-black feet due to burn injuries.

Scott said he had been doing this for 20 years and there was only one person who had required medical help — himself — which was reassuring to hear.

By this point, everyone was fired up!

The vibe was fantastic and we were more than ready to walk through the fire in front of friends and family.

When it was my turn, I took an extra second.

Big breath in, and I went.

I thought it was going to be painful but it wasn’t — I barely felt anything.

I don’t know if it was because of the adrenaline — my heart was racing — or something else but apart from black feet, I left without any injuries.

Those from the hospice and the hospital charity — Suzanne, Sally, Joanne and Sam, just to name a few — put together a fantastic show to help people in need and I’ve been told more than £4,000 was donated, so they smashed it out of the park!

The charities are there when we require help and they still have the energy to take on scary and demanding challenges to chip in even more, which is an unbelievable commitment.

And I’m sure you’ll agree that for our NHS and hospice staff, we should all be ready to walk on fire.