Wednesday (25) night saw another successful book signing event hosted by Fidelity Bank. On this occasion it was the launching of the book, “Coast to Coast”, penned by the intrepid Derek Haines outlining his journey through the Pyrenees with his fellow Rotarian Mike Burcombe.

Master of Ceremonies, Chris Johnson, joined into the spirit of the night dressed as a French mountaineer and made light of the two travelling over 600 miles, excluding wrong turns due to misreading of their maps, or a failure of their linguistic abilities.

The event was attended by H.E. Governor, Martyn Roper and his wife, Elizabeth, Nik Tatarkin, chairman of Inclusion Cayman formerly Special Needs Foundation and its CEO, Susie Bodden, . Chris explained that Derek and Mike had raised over $800,000 for the charity with more to come from sales of the book.

The highlight of the evening was a chat show where special guest Samantha Oakley, a former journalist and star of the BBC television programme, “Watchdog” and ITV’s “World in Action”, posed a number of interesting questions of Derek. It transpired that not only did Derek and Mike, accompanied by Nik for part of the journey, cover the 600 miles, but it was over harsh countryside involving ascents and descents of over 157,000 feet. That equates to five and a half times the distance of climbing mount Everest from the sea to the peak.

The book , “Coast to Coast”, describes their Inspirational journey and can be obtained from Books and Books. Ten pen cent of all proceeds will be donated to “Inclusion, Cayman”.

Brett Hill, the manager of Fidelity, when interviewed, thanked all who contributed to the event and described it as “the best book signing event to date”.

IMAGE: Contributed.