Inside Jailbreak: Tales from Warwick’s Travel Spectacular

8am Saturday morning, I was up braving the cold weather to send off this years intrepid ‘Jail breakers’. Enthusiasm and spirits were high, costumes were on point and teams were optimist about where they might end up. Hawaii, Barbados and Australia were all popular choices. Despite no team managing to blag their way to Australia in the name of charity (maybe next year), this years winning team travelled an impressive 4,759 miles to arrive in Oman, the furthest travelled in nearly a decade. Over £25,000 was raised for Breast Cancer Now and all the teams safely completed their 36 hour challenge.

Since returning I’ve had to chance to speak to some students who took part in jailbreak. Christian McNally, from team ‘Leaving on a jet plane’ who, through fundraising managed to reach Milan, told Boar Travel, ‘the experience was definitely worth it because of the unpredictability of it and the excitement of having no idea where in the world you’re going to end up in 36 hours time’. Despite this, he did note some concerns him and his team had during their jailbreak experience. ‘In light of the recent terror attacks in France we were concerned walking in the streets of Paris in the early hours.’

Amelia Ireland and Aisha Zahid also took part in Jailbreak this year. ‘The Two Chocolatiers’ managed to make it to Paris without spending a penny. Amelia reflected of her experience saying, ‘approaching complete strangers and asking them for help is something that personally pushed me out of my comfort zone. This is certainly something which has made me a much more confident person.’ Despite both taking a lot of positives from their experience, both agreed that in terms of their personal wellbeing it was a taxing challenge.

Undoubtedly jailbreak is an amazing travel experience, raising awareness for a fantastic charity, however, the safety aspect was something that was echoed by many other teams I spoke to. In light of the current climate, perhaps jailbreak isn’t the safest travel opportunity offered to students. As much as I would love to think it would be something I’d take on, I have a lot of reservations about the concept. This may be a pessimistic view and I am well aware that the majority of people would not pose me a threat, however, I can’t help but see potential dangers.

‘The man we were travelling with got arrested at Dover under suspicion of terrorism so we were taken to the station and questioned.’

I caught up with second year engineering student, Annie Jivan, who took part in jailbreak last year. ‘I didn’t make it out the country. The man we were travelling with got arrested at Dover under suspicion of terrorism so we were taken to the station and questioned. We were dressed as convicts as well which was ironic!’

‘At times I feared for my life!’

Annie continued, ‘it was made particularly scary by the fact the Paris attacks happened shortly after’. I asked Annie, in light of this, how she found the overall experience. She reported ‘at times I feared for my life … I learnt a lot from the experience, I learnt about myself and the world we live in in both positive and negative ways.’ When asked if she would take part in jailbreak again, she responded ‘I would be very scared and hesitant to try again. I know for sure my mum would kill me if I did jailbreak again!’