Getting back to normal!

Nearly everything is back to normal!

My parents got back last weekend and the horse has made a complete recovery! Now I am just house-sitting for my friends and they will be returning home this weekend after a month away, so I should be living back in my own house by Sunday (hurrah!)

Returning to my own home will mean it will take me less time to get home in the evening, will means I can write more letters to people asking them to sponsor me for the big challenge.

Several people have already promised they will sponsor me for quite substantial amounts - I haven’t seen the evidence yet, but I have every faith in them.

I also ought to get in touch with the Guinness Book Of records to see if there are any writing records - just in case I could be a record-breaker.

I still have lots and lots and lots of things to do to make the challenge known, but lots of people have already stopped me in the street and commented on what I am doing, which is really encouraging. I must also mention Hugh is being an absolute star by printing thousands of flyers for distribution - I LOVE this man, he is just so good!

Welcome to my wierd world!

It has been a very surreal week!

Early in the week I went about exploring how to make this blog look better - the results of which you can see now. I am not a very technically-minded person, so it took me a few goes (and a few curses) to make it work.

This week, I have been house-sitting for friends and looking after their two cats and zillions of pond fish, and my parents have been on holiday, so I have been looking after their 50-odd animals, two greenhouses full of fly-catching plants and the family’s six horses. I have also been doing the 9-5 at the newspaper as usual, so a typical day has been:

Get up at 6am, feed friends’ cats and fish and reach parents’ house by 6.30am.

Feed all their animals, check plants etc. Grab a quick cup of tea and maybe a slice of toast and leave their house at 7am to arrive at the horses by 7.30am. Do the horses, leave stable yard by 8.15am, arrive at my own house in Newport by 8.35am, change and leave by 8.50am to walk to work for 9am.

After work at 5pm, return to stables, possibly ride a horse for half-an-hour, feed them all and settle them for the night. Arrive back at parents’ house by 8pm, get all their animals in/fed, have dinner and spend at least an hour playing with the house-rabbit, Scamp, before putting her to bed and leaving my parents’ house by 10pm to return to my friends’ house, feed and fuss the cats and hopefully get to bed by 11pm.

As you can see, this hectic schedule has meant either having baths at 5.30am or 11pm (and going to bed with wet hair), while it has been nearly impossible to get horse feed before the shop shuts! I haven’t managed to wash-up in two of the three houses I have been living in either.

More surreal still, one of the horses was unwell on Wednesday night, which meant staying up in the stable yard until 2am, then finally getting to sleep at around 2.45am and having to get up again at 6am to go and check on the sick horse, Thorn.

Last night, I thought I had better bring him into the stable overnight just to be on the safe side and he created hell. He obviously wasn’t that keen on staying in and for safety’s sake I put the wooden grille on his door and tied it in place to ensure he couldn’t get out.

I arrived at the stables this morning to find him loose in the yard. He had smashed through the grille and jumped the 4ft 6in stable door. Remarkably, he had only scraped off a small piece of skin off a back leg and was otherwise uninjured. He’s obviously feeling better then!

I shall be glad when my parents get back later today. It’s been a very strange week.

Moving on

Lots of things have happened over the weekend.

Firstly, the story did go into the County Press on Friday, which is a start. Also Dave in the County Press Shop said he would distribute some leaflets for me at the Robin Hill Garden Show over the weekend, which was great.

I have also just joined Facebook, found several schoolfriends and so have done myself a proper profile and attached my justgiving donations page to the Facebook profile, so now everyone who discovers me knows what I am up to. I am amazed that some of my friends appear to be all over the world including Australia and Florida - and I never knew it!

Knowing I will need more leaflets in due course, I popped into Wight Business Services in Newport on Friday to see if I could beg a few reams of paper for the cause. Gary immediately recognised me from our Island Games days (1993) and gave me a box with five reams, which should keep me in leaflets for a little while! Louise at the hospice also e-mailed me to say they have put details of my charity challenge on their website.

I also dropped into Brickfields Horsecountry at Binstead this morning and they were happy to post a flyer or two on the noticeboards and take a small pile for handing out to all my fellow equestrians who frequent there, which I can top-up as necessary. Excellent! Just wish more cash was pouring in for the hospice. I must re-iterate that every last penny people send goes directly to the hospice - I have already paid for my trip and will go ahead with this challenge no matter what!

Incoming post!

Today a very large envelope arrived from The Russia Experience with our invoice, travel plans etc.

Also included were forms for the Russian, Mongolian and Chinese visas, so I am sure we will be spending quite a few hours filling those in before we have to send them off with our passports!

Best of all, The Russia Experience has sent an extremely interesting guidebook produced by them, which is absolutely full of interesting advice, including mobile phone coverage and charges, how to flush the train loos, where to eat out in Moscow, Irkutsk, Ulaanbaatar and Beijing (amongst others), how to get your hands on opera, circus or ballet tickets in Moscow and much more!

Hugh and I printed almost 1,500 flyers last night to start handing out to people to spread the word. 

I am beginning to think it is going to be very hard to keep on top of all the things I still need to do to publicise this challenge and still work full time. Help - I need a campaign manager! 

Hurrah for websites!

Wow - I’m on the IW County Press website!

As well as doing a story on my challenge in this week’s newspaper, which comes out on Friday, May 25, my company has just put my challenge on the front page of the County Press website, which can be found on www.iwcp.co.uk - so hopefully lots more people will start to find out more about my challenge now.

I have been going very quietly with the pubilicity since the launch five weeks ago because I didn’t want other media getting hold of the story before the County Press did, but now I guess I can go ahead and start shouting. Hurrah!

Click here to see the story on iwcp.co.uk

C’est La Vie!

Do you ever get the feeling things were simply not meant to be?
Thankfully, I am not talking about the big trip, but about my pony’s showjumping final yesterday.
I gave up wine and chocolates last week and set about just eating fruit and veggies to ensure I would be as light as possible for him - which worked because I lost 10lbs to scrape in at 8st 5lbs!
I did all the right things during the week - I rode him mid-week to check he was going well, I gave him extra feed and extra grooming. On Saturday I cleaned all his tack, checked his boots, gave him another groom, started up my lorry and ran it until it was good and warm and then repositioned it for loading.
My derriere still hurts from my cropper the other week, but less!
Sunday morning dawned and I was the lightest I have been for some time, the weather was warm and we were both full of it. I had woken to the radio alarm playing Queen’s We Are The Champions and I was feeling pretty confident!
I gave Twiglet his morning feed, groomed him, opened up the back of the lorry and was about to load him when there was an exposion of noise and I saw one of the ramps springs pull half of the back pillar (which must have been rotten!) and part of the horsebox roof down! So I couldn’t use the horsebox because I couldn’t get the ramp back up!
I rang round a number of friends, but although they were all really nice, various other commitments meant no-one could give me a lift and so I had to call it a day!
As well as that catastrophe, my mother’s pony Bracken was slightly ill, I managed to block my kitchen sink at home and my father managed to drop a bottle of cooking oil all over the kitchen floor at my parents’ house.

So all in all, not a good day!

Never mind, on the upside, I saved £15 in showjumping entry fees and I had time to sit on our four-year-old pony, Thorn.

The moral of the story is - never give up chocolate and wine!

Cheque sent!

It was with great trepidation that I filled in all the forms last night, added any extra information I thought would be interesting to the team at The Russia Experience and signed the cheque for Nikki’s and my deposits and then posted the whole lot.

There’s no going back now - not that I could anyway because people have already sponsored me!

For those of you who have just happened upon this blog and don’t know much about my charity challenge, the plan is to get as many people as possible to sponsor me to write AT LEAST 100 A5 pages whilst on an 18-day trip from Beijing to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

If you would like to sponsor me, all money goes directly to the Earl Mountbatten Hospice on the Isle Of Wight and my fundraising target is £10,000.

There are two ways you can sponsor me: either online via the secure site www.justgiving.com/transsibwriter or by writing a cheque made payable to the Earl Mountbatten Hospice and sending it to: Trans-Siberian Writing Challenge, Fundraising Office, Earl Mountbatten Hospice, Halberry Lane, Newport, Isle Of Wight, UK. PO30 2ER.

Many thanks for your support.

Exciting Times

As I entered the house at almost 9pm last night, the phone was ringing.
I picked it up and it was Nikki. We are finally ready to finish the booking of our trip and last night we made all the final decisions about day-trips and stop-overs.
Nikki is now going to look for flights while I do all the booking, so I have spent quite a bit of time since the call filling out the forms etc.

The company we are using is called The Russia Experience. I discovered it whilst reading an article about the Trans-Sib in Wanderlust magazine and thought it sounded like the company for us because it is NOT a group tour, but runs independent travel packages - hence Nikki and I have spent some time thinking about where we want to go.

Also, the director actually lives in Moscow and although there is a London office, the company uses local guides and family-owned hotels or homestays across the whole route, so we should be able to maximise our understanding of the area and the people, which will really help with the quality of our writing.

If anyone is inspired to take a Trans-Sib trip in the future, take a look at The Russia Experience’s website at www.trans-siberian.co.uk

Countdown to Walk The Wight

I suddenly realised this morning that it is only about a month until Walk The Wight. For those of you not familiar with this event, it is a large charity walk in aid of the Earl Mountbatten Hospice, which takes place each May.

There is the full route from Bembridge on the east of the Island to Alum Bay in the west, which is 26 miles, or you can do a half - Bembridge to Carisbrooke is 12 miles and Carisbrooke to Alum Bay is 14 miles.

New for this year, there is also an eight-mile Flat Walk, which has been proving popular amongst those who felt they would struggle with the hills on the traditional route.

Hugh and I have opted to do the Full Monty, the 26-mile route. I have done the full route seven or eight times in the past and this will be Hugh’s first attempt, but he is a very good walker.

The walk raises vital funds for the hospice (some £217,000 last year) and more than 6,500 walkers have signed up this year, making it the biggest walk yet!

You can find out more about the walk on the website at www.walkthewight.org.uk

I am just hoping I don’t still have a sore derriere by the time of the walk on May 18! Otherwise I will be hopping (literally) mad!

Fortune favours the brave!

Despite hardly being able to walk, I hauled my (bruised) behind onto my novice horse, Zack, yesterday (Sunday) to do his showjumping championship.

He won the award for most points during the winter league (a series of several shows) and we jumped round the course to be third in the Novice Horse Championships, so I was very, very pleased with him - particularly as I wasn’t particularly capable in the saddle.

Let this be a lesson to you all - I will not be beaten!

Now all I’ve got to do is to drop half a stone to ride my (tiny) pony Twiglet in his showjumping championship next week. So no chocolate for me for a few days! No wine either!