Welcome - To the World Record Row blog

Current Location – Braganca, Brazil

26514 km rowed… 13561 km remaining

Now I know that a rather unfortunate by-product of the rowing has been a constant and disturbing monolgue on my part concerning my terribly battered buttocks but the weather has been so bitter of late that I’ve been plodding with rather numb cheeks for too long – five snow falls in six weeks and wind chilling temperatures of -5 degrees centigrade have forced me to wear not one but two pairs of long johns causing a slight waddle and a lot of very unpleasant itchiness!! This has been a long but really good month for the row – despite all the rotten weather we’ve managed to clock up just over 1500km since the turn of the year (the fourth best month in terms of distance since the row started back in May 2008) and a really lovely flurry of donations have come in. One of the most fantastic and humbling things for me during the challenge has been the support of all the brilliant young chaps and chappesses in town and earlier this month Stu (one of Fay’s boys… Fay of fig roll fame!) organised a charity gig at the Red Lion Hotel in Basingstoke. The night was a sell out with over 130 people and the guys raised an amazing £256 for Breakthrough – it was such a success that they’ve booked another date for Saturday 5th March and as they’re all brilliantly talented it would be well worth popping down to watch them in action… more exciting details to follow when the boys confirm the line up.

Here’s Stu below in full flow… (and yes ladies, he is available!)

And a very busy Red Lion!

With just over ten months of the row remaining it was important to get off to a flying start in a bid to raise the profile of the challenge on a corporate level too – I’m delighted that David Taylor and his company 2010media have joined the team. We met up with Craig and Jacqui from The Escape and Simon from Raycon to talk through the row and how we could raise more on a national scale for Breakthrough - Dave had lots of fantastic ideas so I’m more confident than ever that we can hit our £55,000 target. I also had the chance to row at The Ark for the ‘Fit for Business Event’ – it was a great opportunity to talk about the challenge and Breakthrough with some key decision makers in town, as well as our MP for Basingstoke and Deane, Maria Miller, and Destination Basingstoke CEO Felicity Edwards. I’ve got my fingers crossed that the support that Maria and Felicity have shown for the row again helps to spur companies into action to keep the pennies coming in. Clive and Karrin, who organised the event, donated £100 and we collected another £50 that morning alone which was wonderful.

A huge thank you to David, Linda, Seimon and Jack for all donating via the justgiving page. I’d especially like to mention Dave (who’s a lovely guy) - he donated £100 in memory of his mother Edna who very sadly passed lost her battle with cancer on Christmas Day. 500km of our Brazilian route was rowed in Edna’s honour x

We’ve just had a funky new official facebook page set up too in a bid to boost funding – please do join if you can x And thank you so much for all your wonderful messages of support on the original facebook page - it keeps me ticking over in more wonderful fashion than two pairs of chafing long johns x

Guys I just wanted to put up a post about an amazing woman called Kelly who vey sadly died from breast cancer on Boxing Day – she leaves behind a gorgeous little boy called Finley, her husband Jason, and a wonderful family. Many will know Kel as a beautiful woman with an incredible fighting spirit – she is one of the strongest, most loving and inspirational people I have ever known.

Jason set up a facebook page for Kel to raise awareness of breast cancer and her tremendously brave battle against it – if anyone would like to write anything on her wall I know it would mean so much to her family.

God bless darling x

Current Location – Macapa, Brazil

25111 km rowed… 14964 km remaining

Time for the old winter thermals to make an appearance! I always look forward to the thought of rowing in freezing temperatures to show rugged grit, manly defiance  and steely determination but as soon as it actually happens I find it utterly miserable – for the second time this year I’ve rowed in snow and if I can get away with not seeing it again during this challenge I will be absolutely delighted. Despite the numb bum, the build up to Christmas in the town centre is always exciting and the virtual plod has taken us into Brazil – this time last year we were in virtual Russia which made perfect sense with the weather… I think I’ve properly messed up the route this time round! As we hit the 18 month point in the challenge I popped into the BBC Radio Berkshire studio for the Sarah Walker show to talk about the row  - the interview starts at about 2 hours and 11 mins in and if you’d like to  have a listen please do so here. There’s also a really cool piece on the Breakthrough Breast Cancer website and I’m hoping it will help us raise some corporate sponsorship as we gear up for the last 12 months of the row- we’ve just hit the £11,000 mark which is absolutely fantastic.

Earlier in the month I met up with my good friend Andrew McCargow who works as a professional photographer… we met at night in the freezing rain in the middle of the War Memorial Park - he simply asked me to bring a rowing machine and some tight fitting tops. The result of our liason were a series of outrageous photographs involving multiple rowers – if only there were four of us… I could have had this wrapped up by last Easter! I have popped two of my favourites below.

Andrew is as cool as he is talented – if you’d like to know more about him and see his amazing work please check out his website.

A huge thank you to Sam, Andrew, Paula, Simon, Paul, Bhikhu, Rob, Gwen, Jon and Simon for donating online through the justgiving page and especially to Harvey and Carol for collecting all the left over change from an Indian meal that came to a rather wonderful £50!  I’d also like to thank my good friend Martin (who you might remember from the September blog as running as a gorilla in The Great Gorilla Run in boiling heat over the summer) for giving me a figgy pudding… it’s  like a fig roll but you can add ice cream to it and not look ridiculous!

This last year has been a great one for the row (we’ve covered 17,000km in the last 12 months and rasied over £11,000 to date) and the support has, as ever, been brilliant and utterly vital to me – without it I would have come a cropper a long, long time ago. Hopefully this coming year will bring even more pennies for Breakthrough – they deserve everything we can muster for them.

Thank you again and have a fantastic Christmas and New Year x