Rowing in January

31 Jan 2010 posted by Dave Holby

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