Freeway Commerce, an Inovis Company, is proud to announce that two of their team took part in The Great Escape which raises money for Macmillan's Cancer Support. The 'jailbirds' Sales Executive, Nicola Buxton and Operations Team Leader Emma Lund managed to make their way from being dumped in the moors to Tiger Tiger Bar in Manchester, in the wind and wet, taking 3.5 hours and without spending a penny!! With the art of negotiation and persuasion as their only weapon (and a pretty smile) this is how they did it:
The day didn't start well as we awoke to the rain hammering down, but ever the optimists we decided not to take coats or waterproofs as we were sure the sun would shine for us! How wrong could we be!?!
We arrived at a very dark and dreary Strangeways Prison to be packed onto a blacked out coach with our fellow convicts and the safety briefing was delivered as a barrage of verbal abuse from scary prison guards!! Once we were finally on our way we had entertainment on our journey of The Great Escape theme tune, again and again and again!!! After an hour and 10 mins of second guessing our whereabouts we arrived at our destination.....we could hear the rain beating down on the bus and despite a failed last ditch attempt by Nicola to convert a Macmillan carrier bag into some form of waterproof top we off loaded to discover we were in a very wet and windy Skipton - North Yorkshire!
Within minutes the coach load of convicts had dispersed into the crowd and we were left needing a plan, and quickly! We talked to a market stall holder, who kindly offered the services of his sock selling friend who was driving to Manchester later in the day. But as we suspected, it wasn't going to be that easy! Unfortunately he wasn't setting off until 5pm and it was only half past 11, although we had until 6pm to return, we really wanted to be back a long time before that!
So we headed to Skipton bus station, which turns out to be a couple of bus stops in a lay by! After some heart felt pleading with bus inspector, he begrudgingly agreed to get us on the 12.05pm bus to Burnley via Nelson for free! All we had to do now was wait and keep shelter from the rain! After attempting to dry ourselves off using a hand dryer in the public loo's we found refuge in a local pub where we convinced them to give us a free bru to warm us up! Then for the hour and a half bus journey to Burnley, down very bendy country roads and seeing lots of what only can be referred to as 'locals'. The majority of the journey was spent squeezing out the water from our fluffy boots which had become very heavy with the rain and started to replicate a smell of wet dog! Once in Burnley we had to decide whether to attempt to blag another bus or head for the train station.
We decided that train inspectors may be a little harder to convince and stuck with the buses. Luckily there was a bus to Manchester via Rawtenstall departing in 5 mins, we bided our time and then used our powers of persuasion again on the bus driver. This one was a littler harder to crack than the first but eventually he waved us on free of charge. This journey was about an hour and a quarter long, again very 'challenging' roads and more 'locals' encountered! The bus dropped us off near the M.E.N Arena so we just had to make the brisk walk to Tiger Tiger. Easier said than done, with drenched white fluffy boots on but we made it, despite some strange looks, as by the time we made it to Manchester the sun was shining and we looked as if we had just jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed!
Although we both enjoyed the challenge and raising the money for a worthy cause, it was exhausting and we were relieved to make it back!!
We want to thank everyone who sponsored us, it is really appreciated and in total we managed to raise £590 for Macmillan Cancer Support which is an achievement that we are both very proud of. | 
