JAILBREAK!

IN aid of Young Enterprise North East, Durham University students Andy Stephenson and Ali Hunsley faked an escape from Durham Prison on 7am on Thursday 10 June with the aim of travelling to New Zealand in just 36-hours with no money.

Dressed as Batman and Robin, the two best friends, took up the challenge in order to raise money for not-for-profit organisation YENE, which help delivers enterprise education lessons to schools and colleges throughout the region.

Andy undertook the challenge to inspire other young students and show them that ‘anything in life is possible’.

Read on to find out, just how far the duo got on their jail break mission…

“Starting off in Durham, we immediately headed to Newcastle Airport via two hitches with commuters in their cars and then took the Metro to the airport. At the airport we approached all of the flight desks but unfortunately didn't get anywhere, so we moved to plan B which was to hitch down to London, Heathrow.

“At Newcastle Central Station we established that trains were ruled out due to insurance reasons from the carrier, which essentially meant that our only way of transport was going to be by road.

“Heading out of the station we managed to hitch in a car with a great guy called Chris from Gateshead all the way down to Heathrow. With such a direct hitch, we made it to Heathrow in great time, arriving by 4pm.

“Our plan was to approach the flight desks and see if anyone could get us on a late flight. Unfortunately all the desks said no but were amused by our costumes and enthusiasm and pointed us towards BA at Terminal five, since one desk told us, 'if anyone can help you, BA can help you'.

“On arrival at Terminal five, we dropped our bags down in the middle of the terminal and took a minute or so to discuss our strategy when approaching the desks. During this time, we attracted a savvy photographer who came over for a bit of a chat. It transpired that he worked for The Times and told us to stay there for two minutes while he went to chat to someone.
As bemused as each other we stayed put and, as promised, the photographer returned a couple of minutes later with someone who introduced himself as David Sanderson, a reporter for The Times.

“After taking a few details about us and our cause, he instructed the photographer to get a couple of shots and then said that they were doing a story on people heading to the World Cup and his editor may be interested in publishing the photo since it was a quirky story.
Just as the journalist was finishing up, another journalist approached us and gave us a tip-off that Victoria Beckham was about to check in for her flight out to the World Cup at the other end of the terminal, and it might be interesting for us to head down there in our costumes and see if she could help us get on the same flight.

“Immediately our hearts were racing as we quickly headed down to the end of the terminal where a couple of journalists and photographers were trying to hide inconspicuously.
After about 10 minutes with Victoria’s arrival imminent, we'd attracted a small gathering of people interested in our costumes. Unfortunately, some of these people interested in us turned out to be security officers who came over and asked us to leave the terminal. So, not wanting to cause any trouble, we regrettably left and headed over to Terminal three instead, determined not to give up.

“In Terminal three, we decided that the best option would be to head for the south coast where we would have the chance of getting over to Europe by boat and then continuing our journey from there.
However, just as we were leaving the terminal, we got chatting to people from Thompson Sport Marketing who were checking people in for the South Africa flight that evening. After explaining our mission and woo-ed by the chance of being featured in The Times, we were pointed in the direction of the duty manager who sounded enthused at the idea of a large PR coup for Thompson in helping charity. She gave us her details and said to call if we made it into The Times on Friday and she would do all she could do to make things happen.

“Despite receiving such a great opportunity, we decided to hedge our bets and still head for the south coast just in case the photo didn't materialise the following morning. We went to Heathrow Coach Station where we were given a free ticket to London Victoria by the duty manager. We ideally wanted Portsmouth but he said if he was doing it for free, this was all he could manage. We took our ticket to London and showed it to the driver on the Portsmouth coach who we then persuaded to take us to Portsmouth anyway.

“After a long day, we decided to catch some sleep on the way to Portsmouth, arriving around midnight. We spotted a 24-hour casino, who we persuaded to let us camp out in overnight.

“Starting early the next morning, we quickly found a newspaper and discovered that unfortunately we hadn't made it into The Times, but instead of hanging our heads, we headed for the ferry port. The ferry companies were unwilling to budge and we couldn't find anyone to put up the ticket price for us, which was quite a low point.

“Picking ourselves up again was hard, but we managed it and we hitched all the way to Guildford and then onto Woking but unfortunately by this point, we were quite late in the day and after thousands of drivers rejecting us throughout the day we decided to call it a day and head back to the North East.

“Despite not getting as far as we originally hoped, we both learnt several valuable lessons that as entrepreneurs we know will help us with our own ventures in the future, these include:

“The power of the media and Twitter in raising the profiles of campaigns such as ours. Thanks to the media coverage we received, we generated a lot of people phoning us up and emailing us support. We genuinely felt motivated to keep going thanks to the levels of support we've received.

“We learnt that failure is nothing to be afraid of. After continuously being turned down or rejected by people we always bounced back and remained positive no matter what people said to us.

“Always have a backup plan! Effective risk management throughout our journey helped us to always be sure of our actions and made us more confident as we knew if we failed, we always had a contingency.

“Luck - you can't bank on it but you have to take full advantage of it when it's there.

“Finally and perhaps most pertinently, is remaining strong through the dark times and reaping the rewards during the high times. We were constantly being turned down by people, which had a huge impact on morale. What we did was always keep a smile on our faces, even when inside all we wanted to do was be at home again. In the end, we made it to Portsmouth in 18 hours without spending a single penny and that's quite an achievement; we'd have liked to get much further but with the current economic climate airlines and ferry companies were unable to help us out like they have done on previous JailBreak missions.”

Andy x