Beacon Hill

Ok, first of all an apology: I know that I have been neglecting my blogging responsibilities recently! I'm sorry. But things have happened since my last post that will hopefully be of interest!

First of all, we have lost people from the hike: Glen suffering from injuries and Joey being forced to work. We have also had good and bad news with transportation: The good news being that we now have a minibus confirmed that we can drive up in, the bad news being that we only had one person in the party that could drive it (Steve).

How are these things connected? Well, fortunately Steve has come through for us by persuading his cousin to come up with us and help out with the driving! She won't be doing the climb itself (at least I don't think she will) but this gets us out of a hole and I'm very grateful. After all, the alternative was to take a few cars up and get out temporary insurance to secure two drivers for each car; not ideal for us and taking away from the minibus atmosphere!

Panic apart, a few of us took part in another training session today, the focal point of which was Beacon Hill, located a few miles southwest of Loughborough. To make things harder/more challenging, we parked in Loughborough itself and walked there, going around in a circle. We stopped for lunch at the top of Beacon Hill (complete with ice-cream van) and I took the opportunity to take a couple of photos. (See below.)

Overall, a good day with good chat and the opportunity to walk the legs off a 2 year old dog called Murphy, who probably lasted better than the rest of us. But also a rather stark (albeit brief) reminder of some of the steep hills that we're going to be ascending doing Ben Nevis; certainly they opened my eyes a little and demonstrated that it will require genuine willpower and determination to reach our summit in... 12 days time. Where does the time go...?

(Left to Right: Tom R, Rob, Ross, Murphy)

Rutland Water

Thanks to Rob, a group of us headed off to Rutland Water on Saturday to do a long walk in training for the Nevis hike.

I say "thanks" to Rob. Perhaps, "due" would be a better word...

No, I jest! Genuine thanks to Rob for sorting this out as it was a lot of fun, even if it did take a long time and leave us all pretty tired. Besides, since the event itself will require great stamina from us, this made for a good exercise. However, I felt that my shoes rubbed on the balls of my feet that day for some reason, and this wasn't simply a matter of distance because it was happening after just a couple of miles. I'm not quite sure why that happened, but hopefully I can test them out a few more times between now and the end of April to help solve the problem. Anyone who can offer any suggestions, please do!

The walk took us around the edge of Rutland Water in a counterclockwise ring. It was about 19 miles in length, although the walk itself can be stretched into the peninsula in the middle of the reservoir and as such extended by around 7 miles. We didn't do this. Partly because 19 miles was enough and partly because I was paranoid about getting back to the car park by 7:30!

Even so, the weather mostly held off and it turned out to be an excellent technical and social experience - Plus a bit of a confidence boost. After all, this is further horizontally than we would walk doing Nevis itself. Now we just have to work on the vertical bit...

I did take photos of the trip, but unfortunately many turned out poor, and even more unfortunately, the aesthetically rubbish ones were among the ones that turned out well. Such is life. Even so, I present to you below the ones that did actually focus properly, plus one stolen from Steve's camera of the 5 climbers that did the walk.


(Left to right: Tom R, Tom C, Steve, Me, Rob.)

Continued publicity

In my last post, I mentioned how I'd been on Radio Leicester to promote the climb. Well, I'm not sure that I've got anything as a direct result of that, but I'm now looking to use it as a springboard - to put the idea into people's minds so that they've heard of us when they read about us print.

And I'm hoping that they will do that very soon: Leicester City are interested in getting our names and pictures into the programme for the QPR game on Easter Monday (The designated LOROS fixture) and there's a good chance that we could get a mention in local paper The Leicester Mercury and a couple of other websites!

Also this week, we told the world of the Leicester City 606 boards (the messageboards from which we all met!) what we're doing, and we received a great response; several people pledging money to us and giving the JustGiving.com account a serious boost. However, I'm sure we will be returning there over the coming weeks to see if we can do even better!

As such, it's been a pretty busy week, firing emails back and forth and dealing with dramas that have gone away almost as quickly as they appeared.

Apart from that, it's all down to bugging friends and family...

The publicity machine starts to accelerate

Some major progress!

I appeared on Radio Leicester's football forum tonight, along with presenter Ian Stringer, one of those who will be doing the hike with us. I was pretty scared just thinking about it... Indeed, I don't know what a doctor would have said about my heart rate at one point when it was pounding like a drumroll... But by all accounts, I didn't disgrace myself.
I think.

Anyway, I've managed to publicise the event but the sponsorship on the Just Giving site (http://www.justgiving.com/TheFoxesOfNevis) remains low. So hopefully if I can get a mention in a few newspapers or other literature then that can start to build! As such, I have sent off a series of emails tonight to try to obtain publicity through the media.

In other news, I've got our official photo online. (See below.)

Okay, so there are only 10 of the 13 of us in this photo, but it is very difficult to get us all in the same place at once.
Once I get a chance to take a picture of 11 or more of us there'll be a new official photo!

Meeting with LOROS

Yesterday I found myself with a great opportunity to go and visit LOROS, located between New Parks and Beaumont Leys in Leicester. There, I had a very useful talk with one of their fundraising staff, Nancy, who gave me some advice on what I was doing and what else I could be doing. Certainly it helped to know what routes were available to me for fundraising and promoting the trip, and I shall be looking into those and seeing whether they bear fruit over the next few weeks.

One thing that is for certain is that we should be able to get our photograph (taken at the weekend) into the LOROS magazine. Which reminds me, it's still on the camera and not on the computer. Must see to that as a priority.

But what I really got out of the visit was more of a feel for what LOROS do. For those who don't know, they offer services to the terminally ill and their families - both very sad but inspiring work, the kind of thing that restores one's faith in human nature. Certainly it drummed home how any money that we can raise for them will be very well worth it.

Accommodation

Finally some good news!

I have accommodation booked at the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel. So, although I'm not sure how we're going to get there yet, at least we know we have beds and a roof when we do. Now all I have to do is pay for it. Very soon. Needless to say, the call has gone out to the rest of the climbing party to get their money in...

Incidentally, much of the climbing party (including myself) competed in a football tournament over the weekend, this one to raise money for Sport Relief. Yep, we're all veritable money-raising machines! You'll notice that I don't put here how we did in the football tournament. This is because it would distract from the serious issue of the Ben Nevis climb.
Yes, I'll go with that...

Calm before the storm...

It's been a while since I last blogged, but that's mainly because I keep on expecting to have big news to tell... and then not quite getting there. Patience, as they say, is a virtue.

I'm hoping to have some good news to tell by tomorrow, and the conversation I've just had might suggest force my hand in that regard. Essentially, I'm hoping and praying that the situation doesn't change overnight... All very cryptic I know but I don't want to jinx the situation. However, there should be various things ini the offing very soon.

Three pieces of information I do have from the weekend just gone:

1. Travelling to Nevis and back by rail or air will be very expensive, i.e. Probably much more expensive than a minibus. That leaves three options - Coach, for which timing could be an issue, Convoy, which will involve several people driving all the way and will still cost with petrol, or the aforementioned minibus. I intend to ring up and get a quote for one this week, as well as finding out whether we need people with special licences to drive it.

2. I have received sponsorship forms from LOROS which I have started to hand out to the party. Many will have a lot of success with this and have promised to start thrusting them under the nose of anyone who looks like they might have a fiver on them. (Good work lads.)

3. We now have 13 people in the party, as we've been joined by Ben! The poor lad probably doesn't know what he's let himself in for... But I'm sure he'll do well as his enthusiasm knows no bounds.