Once again this year, Imperial’s students set off around the world – they had 36 hours to get as far away as possible from Imperial. Here’s how they got on.
At 09:00 on the 26 November, 83 students set off from Beit Quad. They had one and a half days to get as far away from Imperial as possible. Not allowed to spend their own money on travel, these teams had to collect donations for any travel costs.
The Big Jailbreak 2016 supports Noah’s Ark Hospice, The British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, and Actionaid. Teams raise money either by collecting it beforehand, or getting by-the-mile sponsors. This year was marked by the most ever money raised, over £10,000 with a further £5,000 still to come.
Congratulations to everyone who took part and organised Jailbreak this year. It has been a record breaking event, seeing more money raised for charity than we’ve ever seen before, and seeing more teams travel further distances. Well done from all of us at Imperial College Union; we’re proud of you, and you should be too!
Here are our big winners:
Furthest distance travelled:
Brownian Motion.
They smashed last year’s record of Singapore, and got all the way to Bali, Indonesia!
In second place
RIP Harambe
who got to Gambia,
and in third place
Nepalese Ninjas
who got to just off the coast of Tenerife.
Other teams also managed to take home some prizes:
Furthest distance travelled in the UK
The Hitchhiking Honey’s, who got to Inverness.
Furthest distance (only by hitchhiking)
Shallow End Club, who got to Prague.
Top fundraisers
The High Five, who’ve raised £1,939 so far. Another team could overtake them, but for now, these lot are our winners!
The top three teams told their stories, and left us with a few tips:
1. Don’t go to Harrords, or the Natural History Museum.
Harrods proved “very unsuccessful”, and trying to “offer bored kids [some] ActionAid stickers, in the hope of shaming their parents into a contribution” wasn’t taken too kindly by the NHM staff.
2. Do ride the escalators in Knightsbridge Underground Station.
“The escalators are large and travel antiparallel, and a busy station meant we were able to hang our signs over the opposite side for passengers to read/scowl at. Lots of money was raised in a short space of time by shaking our buckets as we passed by. We did about 20 full circuits of the escalators. Cash was thrown down the centre of the escalators - £1 coins are terrifying when they're flying at you at speed. We called it a day, having enough money for transport south if we flew one way to Gambia.”
3. Do scout out the best spots for fundraising.
“After days of developing the most efficient donation strategy, we instantly knew how to start the day. We immediately split up in South Kensington and relentlessly approached any and all hotspots we had scouted the days before”. Eventually they “had reached a grand total of over £700; [ending up] back at Blackett to book our flights.”
4. Try and avoid Canary Wharf.
“Before Jailbreak we decided to suit up and tackle Canary Wharf, in the hopes of finding a stray millionaire who could purchase us tickets on the day, unfortunately, to no avail.”
5. Try and get some sleep.
“We continued fundraising till 03:00 on the night before Jailbreak. Probably not the wisest idea since we woke up dead with only four hours of sleep, 36 busy hours ahead of us, Rohan only sleeping three hours after a performance the day before, and Ayush just flying in the day before from the Netherlands.”
6. Online platforms are the way to go.
“We also noticed how few people carried cash on them […] we set up a separate online donation page for the day of Jailbreak. Using technology was an effective solution, and we raised £200 from here."
7. Chat to the locals.
“We decided to talk to some local boat owners to take us out to sea! Though we attempted to communicate, our limited Spanish skills (e.g calling a boat a "agua coche", translated to "sea car") and their limited English skills meant that we had very little luck. About to give up, we tried a tug/guide boat of the ferry we had missed as a last resort. We found our saviours Javier and Skipper Nestor, who agreed to take us out a few crucial KM to the middle of the ocean to get ahead of the other team. When people ask "how far did you get?", all we can give them is our final coordinates, which is somewhere in the Atlantic!”
That's it for 2016; until next time, take a look at where you'll need to go to beat our teams!
