Gone Paddling Sea Kayak Circumnavigation of Britain 2010

We received a very useful £161 in donations at Tesco yesterday, inching us slowly toward our £20,000 target.  Again, a few bags of food donations, and a few more people interested in coming down to the launch in two weeks.  Some people even asked about joining in for the few couple of miles, escorting us out of the harbour…

James

Today we reached a big milestone in our quest to raise £20,000 for WaterAid and NACC: our online donations broke through the £2000 mark, so we’re 10% of the way there!  There’s still a long way to go (in more than one sense) but we do still have two and a half weeks before we even start.  This is very positive news indeed.

Much of the donations so far have come in from individual people donating through the justgiving site – thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  The total also includes sizeable contributions from Adrian Flux Insurance, SWC Walls and Ceilings, and H&K Fire Engineering, as well as a large sum of cash raised at Sainsbury’s a few weeks ago.

We’re also aware that some of you have been helping out with your own fundraising efforts, and we look forward to hearing more about these in due course.

If you’re around Truro on Easter Saturday, pop into Tesco and say hi – we’ll be there for a few hours and will pleased to have a chat.   Maybe you’d even like to help out yourself by organising a cake bake at work, or a non-uniform day at school?  The options are endless…

James

Upcoming fundraising event: Saturday 3rd April in Tesco, Garras Wharf, Truro, Cornwall.

We’ll be in the entrance to Tesco this coming saturday, doing a spot of fundraising and raising awareness about the upcoming launch.

We’ll be in full paddling kit and will hopefully have a boat with us (space permitting) – please feel free to come ad have a chat and pick up some posters for distributing in local businesses, schools, shop windows etc.

If you’d like to help by donating a bag of pasta or a tin of fruit, that would be very helpful too!

Hope to see you there…

James

Saturday was a very successful day in terms of kick-starting the public fundraising up at Sainsburys in Truro.  We received over £250 of donations for the charities in about 5 hours, plus a few bags of donations of long-life food (pasta, tuna, beans, cous-cous, soup etc) – which will help to keep us going for a few days at least.

We also had lots of interesting conversations with local people keen to hear about the launch, many of whom offered to stick posters up in local shops, schools and businesses.  Very promising.

One person told us that although Cornwall is the poorest county in the UK, statistically it’s also the most generous in terms of supporting charities; having grown up here and always been aware of the deep sense of community which exists, this statistic does not surprise me in the slightest.

Thanks to everyone who chipped in, and especially to those who stopped briefly to ask about how they could help – it’s all appreciated.  There’ll be another fund-raising day somewhere else in Truro in a few weeks, a little closer to the launch date – details will be posted here a bit nearer the time.

Saturday 6th March, Sainsburys, Truro, Cornwall – 10am – 4pm

On Saturday we’ll be up at Sainsburys in Truro making a bit of noise about the trip, raising local awareness about the launch (20th April at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth) and raising some money to kick-start the fundriasing for the two charities.

If you’re in the area feel free to come along and say hi!