An Evening on Chelsea Bridge for The MoonWalk London 2026

On Saturday 16 May, thousands of MoonWalkers in decorated bras, glow sticks, and brilliant neon poured across Chelsea Bridge through the night. Some were walking 10K, some the 15.1-mile Half Moon, and others the full 26.2-mile overnight marathon. All were raising money for Walk the Walk, the UK’s largest breast cancer grant-making charity, on its 30th anniversary.

For one corner of our team, this was an unusually late shift. As a route marshal on Chelsea Bridge that evening, I spent the night cheering, signposting, and watching wave after wave of extraordinary people make their way through the dark towards the finish line at Clapham Common. It is one of the things I will remember most about 2026.

Walk the Walk has been raising funds for breast and other cancers since 1996. The charity has raised more than £143 million for cancer research, prevention, and the emotional and physical care of those living with the disease. This year’s MoonWalk London, the 28th in the capital, marked exactly 30 years of that work.

The atmosphere is hard to describe to anyone who has not been there. The Arena at Clapham Common, the great marquee where walkers gather before the off, has the energy of a proper festival. Live music plays through the evening, and the costumes are extraordinary: thousands of decorated bras and brightly coloured bra T‑shirts, many hand-customised in remarkable detail, glittered, embroidered, hand-painted with the names of the people walkers are walking for. This year’s Neon 90s theme only added to the energy.

Throughout the evening and early night, walkers stream out into London, past landmarks lit up in pink for the occasion — Battersea Power Station, County Hall, the Sky Garden, BFI Southbank, PWC Embankment Place. The route winds through the city and back across the river, with marshals at every junction, bridge and turning, cheering walkers through.

By dawn, when the last walkers cross the finish line, the sense of achievement on the Common is genuinely moving. Many are doing the walk in memory of someone they have lost. Many are doing it because they have been touched by the disease themselves. Most are doing it for both.

For us at Right at Home Wandsworth & Lambeth, getting involved was not a difficult decision.

Walk the Walk is a fellow member of our local BNI (Business Network International) chapter. We meet most weeks, share work, and back each other’s activities across south London. When the team behind Walk the Walk talked to us about this year’s MoonWalk, supporting them was an easy yes, not because it ticked a box, but because they are part of our local network of friends and neighbours.

There is also a more direct connection. The people we care for through the home care we provide are exactly the kind of people who feel the impact of cancer most. Breast cancer is most commonly diagnosed in women over 50. Around one in two people in the UK will receive a cancer diagnosis at some point in their life, and the proportion rises with age. Many of our clients are living with cancer now, have lived with it, or have lost partners and siblings to it.

The work Walk the Walk funds – earlier detection, kinder treatment, better support for people living with cancer – touches the lives of the families we work with every week. When the charity asked for volunteers, it felt right to put our hands up and be there on the night.

What made the night particularly special was that we were not the only chapter members involved.

A number of our fellow BNI members rolled up their sleeves for The MoonWalk too. Some volunteered, like me, and others, more adventurous, laced up their trainers and joined the thousands of walkers themselves, taking on the 10K, the Half Moon, or the full overnight marathon, many in their decorated bras, all in great spirits.

It is hard to overstate what that kind of collective effort looks like up close. Local solicitors, accountants, photographers, designers, financial advisers and care providers, all stepping out of their working lives for one extraordinary night to support a charity that one of our own members helps run. All of them walked together and passed me on Chelsea Bridge, stopping for a hug and a chat. All of them, between them, raised meaningful money for breast and other cancer causes.

This is what a real business community looks like when it works. Not just referrals and morning meetings, but genuinely turning up for each other when it matters. It is one of the reasons we are proud to be part of our local chapter, and one of the reasons we will keep showing up for events like this in the years to come.

Among the dozens of moments from that long night, one stands out for me above the rest.

Early in the evening, two little girls turned up on Chelsea Bridge with their family, full of energy and excitement, cheering and clapping walkers who passed. Their enthusiasm was wonderful, and infectious.

It felt only right that they should be promoted to honorary marshals on the spot. Off came our neon green Walk the Walk volunteering caps, and on they went. The caps were too large on the girls but they did not seem to mind one bit. The looks on their faces, and the way their parents laughed and took photographs, are something I will not forget in a hurry.

It is easy to talk about community in abstract terms. The MoonWalk is what community looks like in concrete ones. These are the kinds of moments you carry home with you, and the reason you say yes the next time.

It would be easy to treat one charity walk as a one-off photograph for the website, and move on. We do not see it that way.

Community engagement is one of the founding principles of how we run Right at Home Wandsworth & Lambeth. Care does not happen in a vacuum. It happens inside families, friendships, faith communities, GP surgeries, charity networks, local dementia cafés, day centres, and small local businesses. The more genuinely connected we are to the places our clients live, the better the care we can provide.

That looks like a lot of things in practice. It means partnering with local charities through the year, not just during awareness weeks. It means attending and supporting community events, from BNI meetings to memory cafés. It means our Carers being trusted, familiar faces in the neighbourhoods they serve. And it means the team showing up at events like The MoonWalk, in person, after hours, because we believe in them.

Mental Health Awareness Week, which ran from 11 to 17 May this year, had a deliberate theme of “Take Action”. The MoonWalk was about taking action on cancer, but the principle is the same. Awareness without action does not change much. Showing up does.