Tasneem Nagri, Alexandra Kirkpatrick and Amy Turner in Oslo, Norway.
Olivia Macintosh and Lucie Wolfman in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Fin Evans and Kyle Farrell in the Eurotunnel on their way to Germany.
Maisie Jones-Ayres and Rachel McHugh reaching Malta.
Intrepid students travelled a third of the way around the globe without spending a penny in a country-hopping charity fundraiser.
Nineteen teams of University of Sussex students have raised almost £8,000 for national and local charities after taking part in the first ever Sussex Jailbreak.
Challengers were given 36 hours to get as far away from the university’s Falmer campus as possible without spending any of their own money.
Participating students used their ingenuity and powers of persuasion to travel as far away as Malta, Norway, Iceland and Venice in Italy.
In total they travelled more than 14,000km and have raised thousands of pounds for the Alzheimer’s Society, the Clock Tower Sanctuary in Brighton and Turn2us.
Friends Amy Turner, a 19-year-old philosophy student at Sussex, Tasneem Nagri, 19-year-old biology student, and Alexandra Kirkpatrick, 18-year-old psychology student, managed to make it to both Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway, within their day and a half escape and raised more than £200 for the Clock Tower Sanctuary.
Tas said: “Scandinavia wasn't the plan at all. Our original plan was to stay on campus for a while, trying to raise money at the open day, before flying somewhere cheap and warm like Spain. Instead, when they shouted 'go', we got too enthusiastic and ran off to Gatwick with a short but worthwhile stop in Lewes.”
The trio raised the £29 needed for all of them to take a 6am flight to Oslo by selling heart-shaped lollipops to Italian school girls in Covent Garden and Leicester Square and through donations to a PayPal account they set up. They took an eight-hour bus ride into Stockholm, arriving in the Swedish capital two hours before the end of the challenge.
Tas said: “Overall this experience has been a fantastic adventure (despite the sleep deprivation from having only seven hours sleep from Saturday morning to Monday night) and one we will never forget. We recommend this challenge to anyone and everyone, especially those who want to travel.”
Law student Maisie Jones-Ayres, who celebrated her 21st birthday during her Jailbreak adventure, and 20-year-old zoology student Rachel McHugh travelled a competition-winning 2,028km to reach Malta - raising more than £760 for the Alzheimer’s Society. The pair raised money in Brighton by singing songs with their ukulele and met a helpful local who bought them lunch and doubled the amount of money they had already collected before getting a lift to Haslemere railway station, a train to Woking and a free coach trip to Heathrow.
Maisie said: “We had been researching flights all day, keeping an eye on the other teams’ progress, and we knew we had Iceland to beat, and enough money to achieve that. The highly amused ticket man froze the tickets for us overnight so the price wouldn’t go up. It took three people 45 minutes to count out the plane fare in coins.
"Thanks to Jailbreak our faith in humanity is restored, our sense of adventure rekindled and all for an excellent cause. We cannot describe a better feeling and getting the furthest was the icing on the cake.”
Fin Evans, a 23-year-old computer science and artificial intelligence student, and Kyle Farrell, a 22-year-old politics and international relations student, reached Düsseldorf in Germany by collecting loose change from passers-by in Brighton before heading to London and getting a bus across Europe. In total they raised more than £1,600 through their Jailbreak efforts and a 24-hour radio show they recorded on the University’s student radio station, University Radio Falmer (URF).
Fin said: “We wanted to do Jailbreak as we had seen the challenge done before by other universities and it seemed like a great way to raise some cash for a brilliant local charity the Clock Tower Sanctuary, who do great work in Brighton and Hove, offering a place for young homeless people to cook a decent meal, wash their clothes, have a hot shower and socialise with other local young homeless people.
“The experience was actually far harder than I thought it would be and I felt very out of my comfort zone a lot of the time. The journeys were long and uncomfortable and we got hardly any sleep over the 36 hours but it was nice at the end to enjoy some time in a city that neither of us had ever visited.”
Joan Laight, president of RAG Sussex, which organised the fundraiser, said: “We chose to run Jailbreak as it is an exciting opportunity for students to go on a spontaneous adventure all for charity. Through Jailbreak some amazing travel stories have been created. We are very impressed with how popular this event has been considering it was our first time running it and it is incredible how far the teams all got. RAG Sussex could not be more proud of our participants for all their hard work with fundraising and their travel.”
Alison Boyce, fundraising assistant at the Clock Tower Sanctuary, said: “We are so grateful to University of Sussex students, who always rise to the challenge to help us. Jailbreak is one of their terrific fundraising initiatives; the students taking part had to rely upon the kindness of strangers to get by for 36 hours - our vulnerable young clients need to do this every day and the money donated will us keep our centre open to give them a safe and warm place to go.”
For more details on the Jailbreak teams and to sponsor them for their efforts, visit sussex.studentjailbreak.co.uk or, for more details on RAG Sussex, visit sussexstudent.com/organisation/rag.