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Woman to skateboard 700 miles for wounded soldiers

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  • Broadcast Date:

    Tuesday, July 14, 2009 on stv

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  • Woman to skateboard 700 miles for wounded soldiers

    A 27-year-old woman is raising money for wounded service men and women by embarking on a 700-mile skateboard trip.

    Laura Hatwell will make a complete circuit of Orkney's main island before moving on to the Scottish mainland.

    She decided to make the trip following the death of a Royal Marine in Afghanistan.

    Travis Mackin, from Laura's hometown of Plymouth in Devon, was just 22 when he was killed earlier this year while supporting colleagues in the face of hostile enemy action. Laura is a close friend of his girlfriend.

    She said: “I was friends with Travis’s girlfriend, we were on a university course together, so seeing his loss and how it affected her, the families involved and the city, it had a profound effect on me and I really felt that I had to do something.

    "This is my way of doing something - it’s not as brave as being a soldier, but it’s as brave as I can be which is on my skateboard”.

    Laura is now on the second leg of a trip that started in Shetland. From Orkney she'll travel to Inverness, Dundee and then down the east coast to the Borders.

    With every mile that passes, she will be raising more and more money for the Help for Heroes charity.

    Laura added: "The response I get from people pretty much keeps me going. If I didn't have that then I'd find it very hard to push up the hills.

    "Seeing the lights flashing and the horns honking really makes a difference, because you're on your own out there and there's no one to talk to. So it makes a big difference".

    One of Laura's reasons for choosing Orkney as part of the challenge was because her grandfather was stationed in Scapa Flow as a young Royal Marine during the Second World War.

  • Video Tags

    Royal Marines, North, Help for Heroes

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