Didn't make the Salsa Class...

As the little one was off school with conjunctivitis!

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.

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.

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...

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.