Monday 31st October 2011

Last week I said that the sponsorship has dried up a bit - what a difference a week makes!!!  One friend who wants to remain anonymous has been very very generous with a cheque for each of our charities.  A really BIG THANKYOU!!!! So now our fundraising has leapt to £2,559 in total with £1,175 for Marie Curie Cancer Care and £1,384 for Water Aid.  But continued thanks to EVERYONE who has donated.  It makes it all worthwhile!

As I predicted back in the summer when we started, doing the steps is getting more difficult as winter draws nearer.  David has had a horrible cold all week but by Saturday, when we had planned another section of the Rutland Round, he was feeling a bit better. I on the other hand woke up at 7am, it was dark and I had a sore throat and runny nose - I had caught it!  When the alarm went off at 7.30, it was so hard to get out of bed, get ready and get in the car to drive to where we were to start walking!  I can honestly say if it was not for this charity challenge, we would have turned over and gone back to sleep.  But off we went and it was glorious and we both felt much better for getting out in the fresh air.  We walked 7 miles (14,000 steps each!) from Lyddington to Barrowden and we will think of this as the railway section: going under and by the side of old, now unused local railway lines and with wonderful, if misty views of Seaton Railway Viaduct.  A few facts about   the viaduct: 70ft high, 82 arches, built in just 2 years between 1876 and 1878 by 3,000 navies and it has been calculated (by some person with a lot of time to kill!) that 20 million bricks  were made locally to build it.  It is still in use for mainly goods trains, however, once when the main line was blocked, the Leicester to London train I was on was diverted over the viaduct - a long but very impressive diversion. 

One thing I have not yet mentioned is that for our weekend walks, we try to start walking at about 10am and aim to finish by 1pm with lunch at a pub.  So if anyone wants any recommendations of where the best ploughman's lunches are in Rutland - just ask us!  

Finally, where are we with our steps?  David is just over 1,500,000 and I am just over 820,000 - so going well towards the 3 million (2 million + 1 million) by Christmas.

More next week

Jean (and David)

PS both now coughing and wheezing - the Penny household is not currently a healthy place to be in!

PPS according to the stats on this blog, 771 people (excluding me) have viewed it - WOW!!!!!!!

Monday 24th October 2011

This week we have started our individual challenges to make up the 3 million steps.  But due to work and other commitments we have not been able to do any more of the Rutland round.  However on Saturday we walked in Leicester.  Not very exciting I hear you say....

Well, we were out in Leicester in the evening and wanted a few things from the bigger shops so decided to go in for the day.  But we decided to look at Leicester as we would if we were going to visit a city not known to us, as opposed to one where we grew up.  So before we left home, I went onto the 'what to see in Leicester websites' to see what was suggested to tourists.
 
We started off going to the 'cultural district' where the Curve is, a new(ish) theatre  that we have not yet visited.  Lunch was in their restaurant watching street performers in the square outside.  In the afternoon we walked to the museum via the traffic free, tree lined New Walk.  The Leicester Chronicler website says: Leicester's New Walk was laid out in 1785, and was probably the first pedestrian walk of its kind in the country.  It follows closely the line of the old Roman route from the town south towards Medbourne and possibly Colchester.......  New Walk is a charming and idyllic route for thousands of people who walk in the city, connecting the railway station with the centre of the town.  It is the home of  a variety of wildlife including foxes and squirrels, and is lined with a rich heritage of architecture.

David and I were trying to remember the last time we had been to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery and couldn't.  I think for me it was when I was still at school - many many years ago.  But what we both remembered was the huge dinosaur skeleton which is still there as part of a new and fascinating dinosaur display.  But we remembered the museum as a quiet, not very user friendly place - how things have changed - it was vibrant and buzzing with lots of families as it was half term!  The best for me was to see the new Attenborough Collection of Picasso Ceramics.  In 2007, Lord and Lady Attenborough announced that their Picasso ceramics collection would be entrusted to the City of Leicester to commemorate the lives of their daughter, Jane Mary, and their granddaughter, Lucy Elizabeth, who perished together in the Asian Tsunami on 26th December 2004.  (From the Museums website).  The Attenborough brothers, Richard and David, grew up in Leicester.

Then on to a bit of retail therapy and happy hour cocktails in the Highcross area of the city before going out for the evening.  Not quite the Rutland Round, no rural landscapes or  bird song, but looking at Leicester as a tourist was new experience, which we will do again, and we clocked up a good few thousand steps!

Now the weekly step total and I start with an admission.  I got mixed up with the numbers of 0s in our step count last week.  I should have said that I have clocked up just over 700,000 steps and David has done just a little under 1,300,000 steps - I did not out in enough 0s!!!!! (I have now corrected last week's blog!).  This week I have added 52,462 and David has done 100,101 - he always does about twice as many as me........

Sponsorship has dried up a bit but not altogether.  Marie Curie now stands at £905 and Water Aid is at £1,100.  We are very very pleased with this but we are still hoping for more

More next week
Jean (and David)
PS no photos as I forgot to take my camera

Monday 17th October 2011 We've done it!

We've done it!  We have registered our 2 million steps

 We set ourselves the challenge of doing it by Christmas, 154 days from when we started.  But in just 84 days we have done it!!!!!  We were out walking the next section of the Rutland Round on Saturday, another glorious autumn day, and when we got back I put all the weeks steps onto the spread sheet and BINGO - just over 2 million.

A few stats (don't you just love spread sheets!): We have raised over £2,000 pounds (and this really is the important bit), I have clocked up just over 700,000 steps and David has done just a little under 1,300,000 steps, I have averaged 8,612 steps / day and David is at 15,543 steps / day.  On the graph I have put a line of our average daily steps David is the red dashed line and mine is the blue dashed line way below.

 So what now you might ask?  Well we are not stopping here.....  David now has set himself the challenge of reaching 2 million by Christmas by himself and I am aiming for 1 million by myself!  To tell you the truth we are enjoying it!  It is giving us the motivation to get up early on a Saturday and walk the Rutland Round (which we hope to finish by Christmas), seeing parts of Rutland and Yorkshire  that we have never seen before or just park the car and walk anywhere!  You can see on the graph the difference the weekends make - the peaks indicating the times when we have packed up the ruck sack with coffee and waterproofs and walked. 

But the important thing is the fund raising, so we will continue to 'shake the tin' until Christmas and try to raise even more money for Marie Curie Cancer Care and Water Aid

More next week
Jean (and David)

 PS Christmas is not so far away!  Have you seen all the tinsel and crackers already in the shops......

Monday 10th October 2011

What a difference a week makes!  After unseasonably hot weather of the other week - now it is really autumn.   We went  to our flat in Scarborough over the weekend - just two days but if was worth it.  The weather was 'fresh' i.e. not really cold but certainly not warm.  

 
 Gone are the shorts and out have come the wind proof jackets.  We did not go off to walk the moors this visit - not really the time.  But to walk around from North bay, around the headland under the impressive Scarborough Castle, past the little funfair and into South bay around to the Spa is a lovely walk of about 3.5 miles.  When the tide is out  we walk as far as we can along the beach but at high tide it has to be on the promenade and on windy days this involves a few side steps avoiding the splashing waves (see the pictures from this weekend).    

We have been there when the roads are closed along North bay and pedestrians warned not to walk around the headland as the waves are so high it is dangerous.  In fact once we actually saw a mother and her pushchair, with her little girl in it, knocked over by a huge wave.  Luckily they  were fine but very very wet!

 Our steps are still mounting -we have now recorded 1,882,381!  Not many more to go to reach the 2 million but as I said before we will go on until Christmas and see how many we actually do.  Our stats show that while I am averaging 8,751 steps / day David is averaging a massive 15,695!  And the money we are raising continues to grow.  We have so far raised £1,995 thanks to all our friends and contacts.  That is £895 for Marie Curie and £1,100 for Water Aid.

 More soon Jean (and David)

Monday 3rd October 2011

Well here it is October and I am sitting here in shorts and a tee shirt with the window open to cool down!!  What weird but wonderful  weather???  However our garden has never looked better at this time of the year.  Last week I was able to spend some time in the garden and have really whipped it into shape.  This equated to lots of steps walking backward and forward and a good topping up of my fading suntan.  David was with me on Saturday doing all the heavy jobs and we both feel really pleased.  But we cannot bear to pull up all the lovely bedding plants - they still look glorious - so a few more jobs still to do.

The Rutland Round

The quarry

Yesterday, Sunday, we left the garden and did another section of the Rutland Round.  I must admit, my legs and back were aching after all the gardening so it was only our fund raising that got me out there!  David of course was rearing to go.  But once we got started it was lovely.  We only did a short walk, about 4 miles, from Ketton to Normanton Car park on Rutland Water.  It was a strange walk.  One minute we were walking along lovely leafy lanes then we came on the HUGE quarry for Ketton cement.  Many times I have driven within half a mile of it but never realised just how big it is (see pictures).  Is it a blot on the landscape or a great source of business and employment for the county? We could not agree as you could argue either way.  The walk finished at Rutland Water and we were looking forward to a bacon roll in our favorite snack bar.  But catastrophe - by the time we got there at 1.00pm they had not only  run out of bacon but virtually everything because they had been so busy....we had to make do with two of the last few Cornish pasties.   We have never seen the car park so full, but it was lovely to see so many families there.

Rutland Water

 Anyway the money for our two charities is now up to £895 for Marie Curie and £845 for Water Aid and we have recorded just a few steps short of 1,700,000! Our aim of 2 million is not so far away........

More next week

Jean (and David)