CHILDREN from a Bury primary school are embarking on an epic task – to walk the entire distance to Beijing.

Superfit pupils at Hollins Grundy Primary School are walking the equivalent distance to the capital of China to help get them more active.

All years at the Hollins Lane school are taking part in the challenge and maths leader Paul McCrudden hopes some of the parents will get in on the action too.

Each day all the pupils are going to walk a mile a day — 18 laps of the netball pitch — and log that and any extra miles they walk to and from school or at home.

The plan is to have the school eventually walk a collective 5,024 miles, or the distance from Bury to Beijing.

Mr McCrudden said he was delighted that all the children were taking part in the task — and urged as many parents as possible to join in.

He said: “Myself and another teacher, James Perkin, organised it, we did something similar with hula hooping a few years ago.

“We noticed the children weren’t exercising as much any more.

“Initially, we said we would walk to New York but then we decided on Beijing because we could track it on a map.

“We just want to get them active and do it together as a community and get parents to join in.”

The whole school walked the first mile together Wednesday last week, setting out down Hollins Lane.

There are around 210 children taking part in the challenge along with some of the school’s staff.