This year’s UEA Jailbreak winners reached Dubai in under 48 hours

This year’s charity Jailbreak is over, and some students have done very well with the 2017 winners reaching Dubai.

At 12:00pm sharp on Friday, 15 teams set off from the square to see how far they could get away from campus in two days, all to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust.

In previous years, UEA students have hitch-hiked, walked, or have been sponsored to find their way all over the world, with past teams reaching Budapest and Toronto.

This year’s winners, Jenny Worden and Freddie Whipp, reached the Jumeirah lake towers in Dubai in just two days. That’s a whopping  5,415 km away from the concrete square or the LCR’s floors.

They came just short of setting the campus record and were able to raise an incredible £1,160 as a pair for charity.

The duo told The Tab: “Our technique was just to be as friendly as possible. We were able to get a few sponsors early on who wanted to help us reach our goal. People were more than happy to help once they knew it was for a great cause.”

They continued: “The best moments have to be seeing the camels and also the landmarks here, Dubai is an amazing place to be. We are very lucky. The worst moment was being so close to throwing up on the plane because of turbulence, I had my head in a sick bag for the final half an hour of the flight.

“We were able to raise £1,160 on our Just Giving page thanks to all the generous people we know. We would do it again any time, next weekend is free why not then?”

The second place team, called ‘Sell By Date’, managed to raise £1,000 and reach Gran Canaria.

Seb, Elizabeth, and Izzie told The Tab: “We tried contacting numerous travel companies at first as we thought they would help in aid of charity however after hundreds of ‘sorry we can’t help’ emails in my inbox we tried to contact pretty much every company local to us, but people either couldn’t help or didn’t answer.

“We decided to try companies that we wouldn’t have thought of to begin with, and finally got a potential ‘yes’ from Sugar and Spice, the gentleman’s club [In Norwich]. Two hours after they said yes, we were in a Skype call with Daz the owner who was in California. They agreed to help us out and so it was through them that we were able book flights to Gran Canaria for the Saturday morning.”

“We thought that would have been the hardest part sorted but it turned out to be more difficult just getting to Stansted airport in time for the flight!

“The best moments of the trip would be making it to Stansted and taking our shoes off in Gran Canaria after having them on for about 35 hours! But the worst moments were being stuck in Norwich for so long, and being stuck in Attleborough at 9pm on Friday”, they added.

The other 15 teams managed to get pretty far too, finding their way all over the country and into Europe. Final destinations included Stuttgart in Germany, Dunkirk in France and Ventimiglia in Italy. 

This year’s Jailbreak was organised by Livewire, who alongside preparing the event, were able to raise over £900 themselves by hosting numerous charity events here at UEA, including a 48 hour live radio stream from the Library.

Collectively, Livewire and their teams were able to fundraise an incredible £8,489 for Teenage Cancer Trust.

You can donate to Livewire’s Jailbreak page here. Or alternatively you can search for your favourite group on Justgiving.