(For 2008 read 2009!) Click the banner o see how all the teams are progressing with fundraising.

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

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At our final long training session together our feet were starting to say " What walking again!"
We have done the training now it's the support teams turn to take over with all the logistics. Over to you Dave, Kieran, Bill, Tim, Len and Kev.

Please go to our Justgiving website and donate what you can afford. We really do appreciate any amount given. You can leave a message of support with your donation. If you have our mobile numbers you could send us a text message of support during the walk. We will get the messages when we walk into a point where signals can be received. Not too many drunken messages from the football campers please! I am going to try and make regular updates on Facebook you can follow us there during the walk if you wish.

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Fundraising Plant Sale

The kids' school have very kindly allowed me to sell our plants to parents after school. I need to look at our marketing strategy though as the ice cream stall moved and a lot of the traffic did not go past our stall as was anticipated. Some serious promotion is needed! We'll see if we can do better over the next couple of days (Aprentices eat your heart out, watch this space Alan Sugar) I need to get the orders for pots and baskets rolling in.

Had a support team meeting

The walkers and support team all met (in a pub) to bash out all the logistical details, there is so much planning involved in this event, we need a driver and backup person on support all the time from 6 am Saturday am to Sunday am with each person only doing 8 hour stints before having a rest, and we are trying to overlap personel so that at no time is there a completely new support team. we have been through all the check lists to make sure that we have all the equipment necessary. After having to use the first aid kit twice in a fortnight I have been through and made sure we have everything we need, including strapping that is up to the job instead of the flimsey bandage that was in the kit!

New Team Member

We welcome Diana to our team; unfortunateley Tim had to pull out because of his knee.

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Using e-Bay to fundraise

Has not been the greatest success yet, it will take a while to get up and running with selling - I have only bought items before. I am going to list the better items leftover from the table top sale at the coffee morning. Normally it would have gone to the charity shop but I am going to give this a go.

I have been working out the best place to take the photos. I then started by listing a pair of trousers I bought for one of the boys that never got used. It took a while, I had to make a picture of a word document giving information about trailwalker and Life's Voyagers. I then needed to work out what all the options did thatt you coudl chooses when selling; a number of time I went to look at a preview only to loose great chunks of text that I had typed in! Finally got the trousers listed and I thought I would have a go at a second item by copying the first and adapting it, unwittingly I was revising the trousers and morphing them into a girls denim jacket, I got thoroughly confused but worked out what happened eventually.

It has now been bid upon if it stays at this price I will just about cover my costs after the debacle of setting up, hopefully in the future it will go a lot smoother!
Look at my items for sale here
http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZbrunette_400QQhtZ-1

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Have been trying to get comments working

So I need a new post to test the settings

Failed misserably

Monday, 13 April 2009

Easter Sunday

Made £51.30 this morning finishing the raffle, guess the weight of the cake and name the teddy. Thankyou to all who helped.

More importantly there was some serious interest in my request for a fourth walker.

Thursday, 9 April 2009

Fundraising Update

Coffee Morning - had hoped for more people. A big thankyou to all who did come they were very supportive. I'll carry the raffle, cake and teddy on after mass on Sunday, hopefully will catch a lot of people with it being Easter
Choir Debut Performance - Took name the teddy and guess the weight of the cake along and managed to raise over £26 - this bodes well for sunday.
Tombola - had a very productive meeting at Farnborough Leisure Centre. Manager suggested Easter Saturday not a very good day as is not their busiest; they have suggested lots of other better times. I have now got plenty of contacts at the council and they suggested I could try and get the mayor along for the photo opportunity - I think this is a fantastic idea. It made me think of having a Gurkha piper and drummer along as well; the GWT are fine with this but I will need to fix a date when the mayor is available and the centre is busy, that's my next task - as well as the ongoing one of obtaining raffle prizes. The Leisure Centre have come up trumps with these as well they have offered a load of vouchers for the bowling, cafe & play area and even 3 months full membership of the centre. Thankyou very much for all of these, they will be put to good use.

Have walked from CP1 to CP3 ... about 19k

It was a bit of a damp and misty start but the day turned out to be beautiful and hot. One purpose of training is familiarise yourself with equipment; I had a new pair of poles to try out and took ages to work out how to strap them on - I didn't spot that they were marked L & R until over half way through the walk! Our support team were with us and there was never a more welcome sight as we arrived at the checkpoint after 10.3k to see them in the car park with chairs set out and drink and food waiting for us - pasta salad never tasted so good. We set off on the second leg which contained quite a lot of tracks, some chalk paths were still being laid and walking on them was very easy on the feet - the paths were like wearing a new pair of air filled springy trainers - they were really comfortable to walk on. The last drop down to the view point we were meeting at was a killer on the knees, hopefully this will get better with training. We were rather pleased with ourselves for arriving at the meeting place 10 minutes early. In total (including our 20minutes break) we took 4 hours 35 minutes.

Click here ... To see Dan's sponsored hair cut

A big thankyou to the school for organising a mum to come in on 'Bad Hair Day' all the year's mufti money will be added to the sponsorship money for the Gurkha Welfare Trust and Oxfam

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

Fundraising update

Have received children's tickets for Coral Reef.

Daniel's Sponsored Haircut Members of the football team and family have sponsored Daniel to have his hair cut. The more money he raises the shorter the cut! He all ready has £65 pledged which equates to a number three. His school have allowed him to have his hair cut by one of the mums on the 'Bad Hair' mufti day; all the kids in his year will pay to watch his hair being cut. This should get us another £30 so by the time his Dad has sponsored him Daniel will hopefully have raised over £100. A big thankyou to the school for supporting us.

Coffee morning 6th April Plans are going well. I am making some flyers to hand out to advertise the event. Have bought a bagful of bisciuts and will need a visit to Cost Co to buy a couple of trays of danishes, and a jar of sweets. Have got the boys making up names for 'Guess the name of the Teddy', I need to get a teddy bear from somewhere. Need to bake (if I have the time) or beg for a Simnel Cake.

Tombola 11th April great news have got the go ahead to hold this at Farnborough Leisure Centre on Easter Saturday, I would like to say a great big thank you to the manager for this and for the bowling and swimming vouchers.

Thursday, 26 March 2009

Didn't make the Salsa Class...

As the little one was off school with conjunctivitis!

Monday, 23 March 2009

Fundraising

I have found an old display that I can fix up and use for the coffee morning and possibly the tombola. The Birdworld tickets that were promised arrived this morning so at least I'll have a decent raffle prize to add to those I all ready have. I'm waiting to see about the venue for the Easter Saturday tombola nothing is confirmed yet - I have to admit I'm getting concerned now that I'm going to run out of time! My son is long overdue a haircut and he is getting sponsored - the more money raised the shorter the haircut - he had his first £10 sponsor today!

Training Walk Beacon Hill

I spent a very enjoyable 3.5 hours with a friend doing a walk on some of the army land nearby. It was such a varied terrain, at points we could have been in Scandinavia with all the pines. We did very well in that we kept walking only to stop and decide which paths to take or to enjoy the many views we had, or to stop and take some photos; the general consensus of choosing the route was if we saw a hill then we'd climb it! Reason being for the exercise and to suss out where we were - even with the OS Green footpath map it was hard to work out exactly where we were. There is one spot that all walkers and cyclists converge on, from here we followed a track to see where I might be able to cycle in the future with the family. One thing I think I'm going to have to do is buy a second hand 3 wheel buggy so that I can train with my daughter, I don't think the Maclaren buggy will be up to the job over a lot of the terrain. I haven't had the time yet to work out how far we walked and therefore what speed we did but I plan to do so next chance I get.

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Trying a new aero biking fitness class

In an effort to vary my training I'm trying out different classes at the sports centre. I may as well make full use of my membership. Today I gave Aerobiking a go and I really enjoyed it. The instructor gave us loads of good advice & even provided fruit at the end of the session. Definitely worth another try. With the class & walking into town pushing a buggy you can safely say I can feel where I have exercised today! Next week I'm trying out a lunchtime Salsa class while my daughter goes in the creche, I hope she enjoys this as she hasn't been for some time.

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Fundraising progress...

Result. We have permission for a coffee morning to be held at Holy Trinity Church Hall in Church Crookham on Monday 4th April. There will be a table top sale, raffle, guess the weight of the cake, guess the name of the teddy, how many sweets in the jar and plent of tea, coffee and cakes.

Birdworld have offered three sets of tickets as prizes for the team to use.

The Gurkha Welfare Trust and Oxfam have both been very helpful in my efforts to organise a public tombola. All I need is a venue for Easter Saturday. I'm still working on this!

We have ordered 480 plant plugs to bring on and sell. We no longer have a green house ourselves so a request for help is about to go out to friends for some space in their greenhouses.

It looks like we will hopefully be able to organise a public collection at a local Tesco - watch this space...

Tuesday, 10 March 2009

First Team Walk Together

It was a beautiful day for our walk given how miserable the weather had been over previous weeks. I had decided to carry my rucksack containing a new 2L water bladder - which managed to leak all over the boot the car. The rest of the team will be glad to know, I now know how to wrap the tube around to stop this so no more wet gear I hope. I figure that we will all need to carry a rucksack for the event so I want to start as I mean to go on and get used to carrying the extra weight right from the start. I always thought I was a fast walker but the other three team members are all considerably taller than me and the laws of physics means with their longer legs they can all walk faster! Anyway with me feeling like the toddler (from the outset) walking behind it's parents we covered the distance in no time at all. It was a very enjoyable walk and we managed a good pub lunch before getting ourselves to the meeting. Unfortunately I don't have any photos from the day of us on the day as we did not stop along the walk or to get a team photo and we all had to rush away at the end. As I went to a similar meeting last year there were only a few extra points that I came away with (I can't speak for the rest of the team)

  • Set up a separate bank account for money coming in
  • Put as much effort into fundraising as the training for the walk - it is a two part challenge
  • Don't stop at check point one as this gets congested

There's probably a lot more than this but it's all I can remember for now.

We're all progressing with our individual training and meeting up again for another team walk on the 4th April when we plan to do the next two stages together.

Friday, 6 February 2009

Booked into Preparation session on...

Saturday 21st February
We plan to do a walk along the first section of the route before we go to the training preparation session in the afternoon. This will be interesting as it is the first time the team has walked together. We have no idea yet about the pace we each walk at, how many breaks we will need and how long for. I guess these are only some of the many reasons why we need to train together! If you are interested in seeing the route we will take for the event than have a look here:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/fundraise/trailwalker/index.html

On the 21st we will be walking up to the first check point at Harting Down from Queen Elizabeth Country Park. My guess is that most teams will be doing much the same. The more we can train on the course the better, especially for the sections we willl walk at night; the last thing we want to happen on the day is to go wrong and have to retrace our steps 100k is far enough! For our practice walk I think we shall try and follow the advice we have been given and take 10 minutes in each hour to rest and see how we go.

I went along to a preparation session in May 08 to get more of an idea of what is involved; as much as I have tried to impart information I think it is important for all team members to attend. The chance to talk to past participants is invaluable.

We will keep you posted on our progress after the training session.