Shropshire walker restarts 50-bridge challenge

A charity walk is easy to describe and hard to carry after grief hits. That is basically the story here. Heather Ashton, from Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, has gone back out to complete part of a bridge challenge she first planned with her partner Dave Pope and fellow walker Adam Batha — after Pope died suddenly just as the original fundraiser was getting started. This spring, Ashton and Batha returned to London and restarted the effort in his memory. (shropshirestar.com) ### What was the challenge meant to be? The original idea was a 70-bridge fundraising walk around the UK for Pancreatic Cancer UK. Ashton, Pope, and Batha had set it up after seeing a friend go through pancreatic cancer and survive — which they understood as the lucky outcome, not the usual one. The point was simple: keep moving, keep collecting donations, and turn a long walk into something people could join. (shropshirestar.com) ### What went wrong? The brutal part is the timing. The day after the family announced the bridge plan and posed for a photo on Clun Bridge for the local paper, Pope died suddenly at his bowls club. He was in his 80s. That left Ashton facing the kind of question that wrecks these projects — whether the thing you built together can still exist when one of the people is gone. (shropshirestar.com) ### Why restart now? Because the walk had changed meaning. At first Ashton felt she could not continue without him. But friends and relatives who knew how committed Pope was to the fundraiser pushed the idea back into motion. So the challenge stopped being only about pancreatic cancer fundraising and became a memorial too — a way to keep Pope present in the structure of the effort itself. (shropshirestar.com) ### What did they actually do this time? For the anniversary period around the week of Pope’s death, Ashton and Batha revisited the challenge in London. Over three days, with a few friends joining them, they crossed all 16 bridges between Hammersmith and Tower Bridge. That gave the restart a shape people can picture — not an abstract promise to keep going, but a defined route, finished step by step. (shropshirestar.com) ### Why does Adam Batha matter here? Because this is not just Ashton finishing something alone. Batha, 55, was part of the original effort and is someone Ashton and Pope care for, so his presence ties the restarted walk directly back to the first plan. One detail says a lot: on the middle day he walked 10 miles, which was twice as far as he had ever walked before. Across the three days, the group covered 22 miles. (shropshirestar.com) ### Why bridges? Bridges give a charity walk a built-in logic. You are not just logging miles in circles. You are moving from one visible marker to the next, which makes the challenge easier for other people to follow and easier for supporters to join for a stretch. Tha(shropshirestar.com)he memorial version without pretending nothing changed. (shropshirestar.com) ### Is the fundraising still open? Yes. Ashton said the wider bridge effort would continue with help from friends and family, and that anyone wanting to walk with the group would be welcome. Donations are still being directed to Pancreatic Cancer UK through Ashton’s fundraiser page. So this is not a one-off remembrance lap. It is an ongoing local charity project that survived the loss of one of the people who started it. (shropshirestar.com) ### Bottom line? The news is not just that a walk resumed. It is that Ashton found a way to keep the original purpose alive without flattening the grief out of it. The challenge now does two jobs at once — raising money for Pancreatic Cancer UK and carrying Dave Pope’s part of the story forward. (shropshirestar.com)