Current Location – Badombe, Mali
34296km rowed… 5779 km remaining
Thank goodness! We’ve finally we hit dry land! After several weeks bobbing around the South Atlantic I hit the coast of Liberia… the weather was a bit muggy with a faint whiff of fresh tarmac, remarkably similar to that of The Mall Shopping Centre in Basingstoke. A steady plod up the west coast of Africa should see us hit Gibraltar by late September – I think I can still be home by 18th December which is lovely (and will save me from the £5 I will owe Graham in security should it take me longer).
Well it’s been a very exciting few weeks in terms of fundraising. Earlier in the month I met the Mayor of Basinsgtoke and Deane Cllr Keith Chapman (and an incredibly nice man he is too) for a cup of tea in the Mayoral Parlour with Debbie, the Mayoral co-ordinator, to discuss the launch of The Breakthrough Album. This CD is jam packed full of fantastic young local musicians and I’m hoping should be ready for release by the end of August with all pennies of course donated to Breakthrough - the Mayor has been incredibly supportive of this venture and I’m hoping we should have an album ready to present to him very soon. Please have a read of the article on the Basinsgtoke & Deane website if you’d like to know more. As you will detect, I was unfortunately forced to remove my outrageously smelly rowing shoes.
All the guys and girls have recorded their tracks which is marvellous and the final line up has been confirmed as follows – The Fortunate, Common Ground, Dani Dacey, Kobra, Fake The Attack, James Mitchell, Harry Harwood, OkCorrel, Friend Of An Enemy, Signal, Blood Of The Spectre, The Forgotten Martyr, KTS, The 4:20 and Goodnight Siren. They are all absolutely brilliant and fingers crossed the album is a huge success, they so deserve it to be - more news to follow in August’s blog!
I also had the pleasure of rowing at Aldworth Science College during their Activities Day. The guys were absolutley fantastic and wore pink to school to raise money for Breakthrough – a whopping £422 was collected which is marvellous, taking our collection pot now to just shy of £14,000. A huge, huge thank you everyone involved and especially my gorgeous friend Klara for setting it all up x
After a weekend of doing The Three Peaks Challenge (scrambling up Ben Nevis, Scaffell Pike and Snowdown in just under 26 hours) my fellow three peaker and very good friend Simon and I met with Sarah Winckless for a cup of tea to discuss further ways of raising money. Sarah is just utterly incredible – not only is she a double world rowing champion and Olympic medallist but is also inaugural chair of the British Olympic Athletes Association. She has some wonderful contacts (as well as being wonderful herself) and hopefully we can start making some real head way in landing corporate sponsors. Coming into the final weeks of the row, I’m so aware that I will probably never have such a great opportunity to raise such a huge sum for Breakthrough – it’s completely worth exhausting every possible avenue.
The highlight of the month for me was visiting Breakthrough’s research centre in South Kensington for the unveiling of The Challenger’s Wall – this is where you get to nominate someone wonderful who has either fought and won their battle with breast cancer or very sadly lost. I was very priviledged to nominate my lovely friend Kelly who passed away on Boxing Day at the age of just 24 and her name is proudly displayed there. It was also a wonderful opportunity to meet the fantastic fundraising team at Breakthrough (all of whom are smashing) and the amazing scientists who’s groundbreaking and vital research relies so much on all the money you have so very kindly donated during the last two years of this challenge – frankly it shows how brilliant you all are.
A huge thank you to Jo, David, Emma, Crispin, Simon and Sarah for all donating through the justgiving page - £13,857 raised and counting!! x
