As the New Year arrived I made a resolution that I would raise £2000 for a worthy charity in 2010. The charity I have chosen is Help for Heroes who do an outstanding job helping wounded and ex servicemen throughout the .
Many of you will not be surprised to learn that I will not be running a marathon or climbing a mountain- I am built more for comfort then speed! Instead I have decided to link this project to my love of classic cars.
I intend to travel from Lands End to John O’ Groats and then home again, a journey of over 1700 miles. To make the project mentally, physically and emotionally challenging I have added in some additional hurdles.
Firstly there is the car. Rather then using one of my existing classic cars which are well maintained and reliable (sort of!) I have decided to get a cheaper and less pristine car- technically known as a heap!
The car I will be using for the trip must satisfy the following;
- It must be of a similar vintage or older than me. ( Hard to believe but that means it must have been built in the 70s or earlier)
- The budget for the car £2000. ( I will fund this myself)
- Any work required to make it road worthy or to convert if for the journey must be undertaken by me or my co- driver.
When you consider that I can’t even put up a straight shelf at home and that even a “restoration project” could exhaust the budget this is a pretty serious challenge.
We will undertake the journey on Friday 13 August 2010 (just for luck). To make the journey just that little bit more difficult and stressful we will have the following additional challenges to deal with.
- We will only use roads that are in keeping with the age of the car- this will mean largely sticking to A & B roads
- We will not have a support vehicle- just a boot full of spares, a Haynes manual and crossed fingers!
- We will navigate using only maps (no satnav)
- My co- driver and navigator will be my wife (that’s the emotionally challenging part- she can’t read maps and I don’t ask for directions!)
- Once we have chosen the car we will set targets for reaching key destinations in line with its performance.
If any one has other challenges or constraints feel free to suggest them but you will have to put up some decent sponsorship to make me do it!
Throughout the project from choosing and buying the car to the inevitable hissy fits on the journey I will update a blog at www.lejog4heroes.blogspot.com/
I am accepting all types of sponsorship and will probably organise other events to ensure I achieve my £2k target so watch this space.
Please give generously as Help for Heroes is an extremely deserving charity and all your donations plus the gift aid benefits will go towards helping injured servicemen. To find out more about Help for Heroes go to www.helpforheroes.org.
Many thanks for your generosity.
James& Lynn Gray
PS. Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
So please dig deep and donate now.
