A man who walked the West Highland Way in honour of his partner and her late son rounded off the 96-mile charity challenge by proposing to her at the finish line. Benjamin Ward said they were his “sole focus” as he completed the hiking trail in 36 hours and 48 minutes.
Proposal at the finish line
When the 44-year-old from Falkirk crossed the finish line in Fort William last Sunday, he got down on one knee and asked partner Natasha Goldthorpe, 37, from Irvine, to marry him. He told the Press Association: “I don’t think it’s quite sunk in what I managed to do, because I was so just focused on trying to do it for Natasha and Liam – that was really my sole focus in it.”
Natasha's son Liam had a rare and progressive condition called BPAN, a disorder that damages the nervous system and gradually gets worse. He died last October aged 13.
In memory of Liam
In memory of Liam, Benjamin decided to walk the 96-mile route in one continuous push to raise money for one of the charities that helped the teenager’s family. Natasha said: “Liam had a progressive condition, but he was always happy and smiley.
“He had a really contagious smile. He was giggly. He’d find noises really funny. He was just such a gorgeous boy.”
Benjamin - a manager at a tiling company in Irvine - said in the time he shared with Liam, he witnessed incredible strength both from the youngster and his mother. “I got to know Natasha and I was very much blown away by the care and love and relationship between her and Liam,” he said.
A special place for the couple
Last August, he took on his first West Highland Way challenge in honour of Liam, walking the trail in two-and-a-half days to raise money for Children’s Hospices Across Scotland, another charity that supported the family. At the end of that challenge, Natasha confessed her feelings for Benjamin.
Since then, he said the trail has felt like a special place for them both - and why proposing in Fort William a year later at the end of his latest challenge felt right. Natasha said it was “great” to see him jog across the finish line and get down on one knee, but she could not stop laughing.
“It was weird because he was running and smiling, and everybody who was supporting him [for that last section] looked more miserable and more tired and more fed up than he was,” she said.
Weather challenges and fundraising success
One of the biggest challenges Benjamin experienced along the way was the weather. He said he walked about 30 miles overnight and it “didn’t stop raining once”.
He recalled: “It was heavy rain and the wind also picked up, so it was kind of driving rain into our face. I couldn’t see probably more than four feet in front of my face because it was just pitch black, and then the rain was just making it even darker.
“The paths had turned to rivers at that point because the rain had been so constant, so all the trails were just full of water. My feet were just consistently soaked pretty much the whole night.”
Despite the poor conditions, Benjamin said giving up “never” crossed his mind. “They were my inspiration for doing it, Natasha and Liam have been everything, really,” he said.
“I did actually enjoy it, which is a weird thing because I didn’t expect to enjoy it. I thought by the finish line I would be crawling.”
Benjamin's challenge has raised more than £3,000 for Together for Short Lives, a leading UK-wide charity dedicated to supporting children and young people with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions and their families. The charity created necklaces from Liam’s fingerprint for Natasha and her family following his death at no cost.
“Having seen first-hand the impact [Together for Short Lives] makes, I wanted to try and support their work for other families faced with such devastating events,” Benjamin said.
Although his challenge is complete, Benjamin's JustGiving page is still accepting donations.
