Hanging socks on the clothesline for a weekend to set the world record for ‘longest clothesline with socks’. Three hundred volunteers took the plunge last weekend. On Sunday afternoon they thought they had achieved the record, but the jury was inexorable: they came 250 meters short.
The record of 6066 meters is in the hands of the German city of Halverde, the Helmonders were eager to take over.
The socks started to hang on the Piet Blomplein from 12:00 on Saturday afternoon. Armed with over 100,000 socks and 105,000 clothespins, all socks were hung up.
Guinness Book of Records judge Lena Kuhlmann did the judging on the spot. Earlier Sunday, the organization was still full of confidence, they sincerely thought they would make it. Still, Kuhlmann brought bad news on Sunday.
Initiator Tahné Kleijn is very disappointed: “We really thought we had more than achieved it, with our calculations we arrived at more than 7000 meters. But in the end we came up short by 250 meters.”
At that time, they still had fifteen minutes to break the record, but there were not enough socks in stock. There was also no time to hang up such an amount of socks.
Tahné does have an explanation for this: “We wanted to do it too perfectly. We were allowed to leave a centimeter between each sock, but we didn’t do that with the idea that we would make it more than that. If we had that centimeter in between left, then it would have worked. A real disappointment.”
Nevertheless, the organization is very happy with what has been successful, namely almost 24,000 euros for 2500 Helmond children who live below the poverty line. “That’s what it was all about for us.”
According to the initiator, the event has brought a lot of commitment in Helmond. “It’s really moving when you see what happened this weekend. Young and old, all kinds of cultures, everyone helped. Ukrainian refugees have also hung socks and they sang the Ukrainian national anthem on stage. kept dry.”
On Sunday evening, the not-longest washing line will be dismantled. The old socks are recycled by a textile processor. New socks have also been hung in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Those socks are donated to refugees.
The organization will be in talks with Stichting Leergeld van Helmond in the near future to determine what the children need. “We are going to give these children the best day of their lives this summer.”