Allen Saltmarsh is a fundraising volunteer who regularly supports the team to organise events and encourage the community to take part in fundraising activities. During lockdown, Allen has been taking part in Walk the Wight Your Way and says he is ‘proud to be Mountbatten’. This is Allen's story:

My role as a volunteer is more important to me than I sometimes remember. 

Until the beginning of the lockdown in the fourth week of March, it had been an essential part of staying connected to normal society - without which I had struggled to lift my spirit.  I desperately miss contact with our Mountbatten family; I feel I should be helping someone, somewhere.  It is ‘what I do’ and not being able to be out helping leaves a massive void.  I am hugely grateful for the phone calls and messages from the fundraising team and these go some way in helping, but I can’t help feeling guilty.  It is those times I think of all those who don’t have the luxury of looking out on our beautiful countryside or even have a garden to walk in. 

Just like many others I have been keeping track of how far I have been walking.  Between 24 March and 9 May, I have walked just over 158km and planned to add another 48.5km ( 30 miles ) during the week beginning 10 May for Walk the Wight Your Way by completing circuits of Whitwell and surrounding villages and maybe even Ventnor as well. On Sunday 10 May, when we would have been Walking The Wight 2020, I had planned to do the entire walk this year in a yellow tutu.  I decided the tutu could take an outing each time I walked that week.  With my Mountbatten 30th Walk the Wight yellow t-shirt and yellow tutu, I was set.  

I have since added 60.33km, so in total I have walked 218.33km - equivalent to 135.66 miles – and as well as several anonymous donors on my JustGiving page, I have so far raised £310 in total.