Aching muscles and blisters pretty much over today, I decided to Google both ‘transsibwriter’ and ‘Kate Young’ earlier and I was amazed at what I found!

I am all over the web! Strangely, as well as the blog entries and the County Press story coming up - which I expected - I have found several websites that have managed to make a link to either the CP story or my site, further spreading the news of the challenge.

I also found a little piece on the challenge in yesterday’s Southampton Daily Echo with a photo, which was nice, and Press Gazette have been in touch to say they hope to run a story next week and can I send them a picture? This is great!

Now I am just working on keeping up the publicity and simply hoping lots of people will eventually sponsor me!

Yesterday (Sunday) Hugh and I did Walk The Wight in aid of the Earl Mountbatten Hospice. I have done the full route of at least seven times, but it was Hugh’s first go at this marathon-length charity walk, so we got up nice and early, caught a 6.15am bus to the start and actually began our walk at 6.40am.

I have been involved with the walk since its early years and remember the founders Bill Bradley and Frank Stevens very well. They designed the walk as being a good day out and a chance to socialise and see fantastic Island views that you might not normally see, so I had impressed on Hugh before we began that it was not a race.

About three-quarters of a mile into the walk his phone went off and it was his younger sister Dawn, who told us they were about a mile ahead of us, having begun slightly earlier than we did.

So we upped our pace, caught them about six miles into the walk, passed Dawn, her partner Derek and our super-fit family member Richard and went on to the end of the first half at Carisbrooke.

We did the 12.5miles from Bembridge to Carisbrooke in four hours and we were feeling fine, so we took a short lunch break.

Much to our surprise, we saw Richard leave ahead of us with his son, Adam, who had joined him for the second half from Carisbrooke to Alum Bay.

We kept on at a steady three miles an hour over the hills of West Wight, but we never saw Richard and Adam and we were about three miles from the finish when Hugh’s phone rang and it was Adam to say he had left his dad behind (Adam is a very sensible teenager so this is okay!)

We went through the Alum Bay finish at 3.50pm - some nine hours and ten minutes after we started the 26.5 mile walk and we were really chuffed - especially when we discovered that Hugh was the first member of his family to get to the end!

Richard finished in a bit later, all the other family members completed the walk too and everyone agreed they had a great time.

This year’s walk was particularly amazing because they topped 10,000 walkers for the first time. I can remember the 2000 walk particularly well - Bill died in September 1999 and his family were keen to see 2,000 walkers in 2000, which was achieved. But as Frank and I stood at the start (then at Bembridge School) we knew it was no longer just a little walk for friends and families and the event would never be quite the same again. What would Bill have thought if he had seen the 10,000 walkers who streamed across the length of the Island this year?

But it’s all in a very good cause and I felt more than a bit emotional as I thought of my late friends and acquaintances who have been cared for by the hospice, particularly Jeremy, who died last autumn and whose memory we were walking in this year.

I also saw several people whom I know have lost family members to cancer and other terminal illnesses within the past year and all were coming through the finish with big smiles on their faces - even though they had aching legs and blisters.

Doing a walk is a massive achievement and although I may be sore for a few days, it will soon pass and my life will return to normal - while many of those patients who find themselves being cared for by the hospice will find their lives will never be quite the same again.

To me, doing Walk The Wight puts everything into perspective. Long live this truly inspirational event and long may people continue to support it - and the hospice.

I have received a form from Guinness World Records and one of the things you have to do IF they accept your challenge as a record attempt is to provide a video/DVD of the whole record attempt. Personally, this sounds like a bit of a nightmare. It would be difficult enough for me to video 18 days straight, but to video just when I am writing in a number of different countries, some of which are rather media-sensitive sounds like torture!

If anyone has any good ideas about how to achieve this, I would love to know! I have no problem with getting signed statements from lots of witnesses etc etc, but I have a feeling a really long video is going to be a bridge too far!

It’s free to submit my challenge for consideration anyway, so I will do that, but I now believe this could be very difficult to carry out as any kind of record (if indeed it is one, because I couldn’t find any writing or diary-type records on their search!).

All that aside, I am soon to start contacting lots of other media and writing loads of “Please will you sponsor me?” letters to local businesses. I guess it’s an odd way to spend your summer!

Since my last post, my friends have come home, I’m living back in my own house and I’ve started trying to find out whether any aspect of this challenge is possibly a world record.

Firstly, I went onto the Guinness World Records website and tried a search for ‘writing’ and nothing came up. So I tried ‘diary’ and nothing came up. So I read the long-winded FAQs about what they do and don’t accept as a record and found some records for poetry, but not much else.

So I decided to fill in the form and submit it. It will take four to six weeks for them to come back with an answer as to whether any part of the challenge could be a record. My guess is that they may decide it is not measurable or simply unquantifiable, but it’s exciting all the same. NB: the GWR website is a bit confusing.

On an equestrian note, my hip is still sore from the fall a month ago, but I decided to take my novice horse Zack out to a cross-country competition yesterday and he jumped round really well with me and took fourth place in one of the classes.

It is also now less than a week to Walk The Wight, the mammoth charity walk in aid of the hospice. I am still hoping to walk the full 26.5 miles.

If anyone out there is actually reading this blog, could they please send me a comment. I am beginning to think there is no-one out there! What do you think of my challenge? What do you think of the new-look blog? Some thoughts please!

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!

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.

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!

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! 

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

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!