Tuesday 29 May 2012

May Madness!

So this has been a month and a half! With various house moves, swim training, a trip to Dover and a whole lot of work, we've had plenty going on, but this weekend, we concentrated all our efforts on fundraising...and raised a massive £606.05!

Many many thanks to the generous folks shopping in Kirkstall Morrison's on Saturday for donating £477.90, and also to our other halves, friends and family who donned the most stylish of attires - the Aspire tabard - to help us pack bags!

Sarah's mum Jayne also raised £23 from selling plants, including these beautiful Alpine gardens:



...and we spent a beautifully sunny Sunday in Kirkstall Abbey selling our crafty (and tasty) bits and bobs, raising a brilliant £105.15!



 

Thanks again to all our crafty family - Sarah's grandma made these psychedelic tea cosies!


Thank you also to Sarah and Paul and Auntie Sandra for their generous donations! We're now 78% of the way towards our target, which we're so, so pleased about - thank you all so much for your support so far!

Thursday 24 May 2012

We finally meet the rest of our pod!

It's been very quiet around here of late hasn't it! We've been so busy with training and fundraising and work that we haven't updated in almost two months!

So here's what we've been up to...

We had our first training weekend in Dover with all the rest of the Aspire swimmers.  We met the rest of our team:


From left to right - Sarah, Sophie, Kay, David, Heather and Jackie

We also did our first bit of proper sea swimming in Dover harbour.  Under the instruction of the legendary Freda Streeter, we did 2 swims of 20 minutes (which turned out to be closer to 30 as the harbour wall was further away than we thought) on Saturday and a swim of 45 minutes of Sunday. Gail from "Team Spare Parts" (aka this year's reserve swimmers) took lots of pictures, which she's kindly agreed to let me share with you here.

We passed up on the opportunity to get lubed up by a stranger (we later regretted this)...


My finger providing Sarah with some inspiration of where to go...


We'll be right back!


Getting dressed afterwards proved to be a stressful and confusing experience for Sophie, whilst Kay found the whole thing very amusing!


How anyone can look this cheerful when they can't feel most of their limbs due to the cold is beyond me!


Once we'd all got all of our clothes on, we started to get warm and feel a bit happier!


We're now up to 61% of our fundraising target. As usual, everyone has been fantastically generous with their donations - thanks go to Amy & Martyn, Aileen & Neil, Mick & Olga, Chris Lacey, Aimi & Chris, Charly & Ben, Craig, Andrew and Laura (phew!).

This weekend our sexy seal outfits will be coming out to pack bags at Morrisons in Kirkstall - if you need groceries, come down and see us on Saturday!

Happy swimming!