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Carl’s TV lightbulb moment leads to an incredible £300k of donations in less than a decade
Back in 2014, Carl Baldry was watching a TV documentary in which actor Idris Elba entered a Cannonball Run Rally. Little did he then know that it would become the catalyst for an initiative that – in 2023 – took total donations for charity to over £300,000 in nine years and seven events.
‘It actually came to me watching TV one night,’ said Carl, from Wellingborough, Northants.
‘I was watching the actor Idris Elba doing a Cannonball Run across America. I put a comment on my Facebook feed, saying 'who's watching this? I would love to do it.' And before I knew it my feed went crazy with people saying 'I'd do it, I'd do it, I'd do it’.’
By the end of the week, 12 of Carl’s friends had signed up and the Rust Bucket Rally was born, with the premise of entrants spending no more than £500 on a car (though for 2023, this was adjusted for inflation to £1000) and led to him being nominated for a Pride of Britain Award – by 2019, the rally had topped £175,000 of charity donations, and despite no events being run in 2020 and 2021 thanks to Covid-19, it is now running two events per year and supporting two different charities.
For 2023, the rally went to Slovenia in aid of Breast Cancer Now, raising £40,000 for the chosen charity, followed by a second, shorter event to the Swiss Alps. The route took the rally through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria before arriving in Slovenia, passing over the Grossglockner High Alpine pass in Austria, Lake Bled in Slovenia and the Neuschwenstein Castle in Germany, featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
PC readers Darren and Selina Walster nominated Carl as a Charity Hero having become Rust Bucket Rally regulars in recent times, after James Walshe gave Darren a Citroën C5 in 2017. Darren and Selina have subsequently used it to take
