Brain nearly went into melt-down....

One of the aims of this wonderful challenge is to raise loads of money for Oxfam & the Gurkhas. Our current target - albeit that we haven't started the fundraising yet - is £3,000. However, in order to get fit enough for the challenge I, for one, am going to have to lose at least a stone in weight.

Therefore, I need to both gain and lose pounds at the same time!

This is where my brain went into a continual loop - raise 3,000 pounds, lose 14 pounds, raise 14 pounds lose 3,000 pounds - OVERLOAD WARNING!!!

Now, whilst £3,000 may be an ambitious target and 14 pounds may be far less than what is actually required, it's always good to have a target.

Now if I had to lose 3,000 pounds, I would be actually be called Nelly (or whatever the male equivalent of Nelly is!) and would be an Elephant. As an Elephant, raising 14 pounds might actually be quite a challenge but...

...once I worked out how to, I would never forget!

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Location:Cedar Dr,United Kingdom

The challenge...

Now I would imagine that most of you are either car drivers or if not, users of public transport. If you are, then there may well have been a time when you considered leaving the car/bus and walking instead - especially when your planned journey was a short one.

So what would be an acceptable distance to walk? One mile? Two? Four or more?

Well, our challenge is slightly more than the equivalent of a walk into town..actually it is considerably more!

Our challenge is to walk 100km, non-stop, in under 30 hours (we're actually hoping to do it in less than 20!) and over the course of the route over the South Downs will climb the equivalent of Mount Snowdon and Ben Nevis - combined!

We will also be looking to raise vast sums of money for Oxfam at the same time as part of the 2011 Trailwalker UK Challenge!

We will be charting our progress via this Blog, Twitter, Facebook etc, etc and would be extremely grateful if you could share this information with as many people as you can. Our fund-raising account can be found at the following link: -

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/OTHAFA

Location:Station Way,Crawley,United Kingdom

First training walk completed

On what was one of the best days of recent weeks we set off on our first training walk in preparation for Trailwalker UK 2011! We completed two stages of the Trailwalker route from Washington to Devil's Dyke in just over three and a half hours, with only a few minor blisters amongst team.

May need to do a bit of planning re provisions and support team for the day as we survived on a diet of wine gums and jelly babies, and had to wait three quarters of an hour for our support team to pick us up, because they were in Starbucks!

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Location:Devil's Dyke

The Team "Name"

After, much deliberation, alcohol, inspiration, perspiration, more alcohol and numerous other words ending in "tion" - we arrived at our cleverly (a relative term) constructed team name of "Over the hills and far away".

With a combined "team age" of over 150, some may consider that the elder (..and obviously wiser) members of the team to be be "over the hill", but we are out to prove all wrong, and end up "far away" having had a great experience and raised loads of money for this great cause.

Only half the "team" shown in picture below (From left to right - Rob, Pete, Matt, Paul) - support team (Teresa, Isobel, Charlotte and Ali) make up other half!

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Location:Southwater