Well, I bet you would never have seen this coming.  In January I agreed to join a group of 13 others to take on a challenge, which in hindsight is actually quite daunting.  Our aim is to kayak the River Thames from Cricklade (the Western limit of navigation) to Putney / Westminster (depending on the tide) a distance of about 150 miles.  We start on Thursday 30th April and finish on Monday 4th May (5 days).

The last time I got in a kayak before taking delivery 48 hours after agreeing to do the event was some 30 years earlier at school...  Crazy I know... almost every weekend so far, we've been getting in about 10miles and getting longer each week.   However still going to be an interesting few days with potentially three times that distance needing to be covered each day to finish on Bank Holiday Monday.

As Roger mentioned on the title page, the serious side is, of course, our attempts to raise money for two charities Great Ormond Street children's hospital and  Macmillan Cancer.  So I have created two identical pages on which you can choose which charity you would like to give too. 

Both charities are important to me personally with a number of family members having been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and having gone through (My dad - and got the all clear) and currently going through treatment, as well as close friends and family and Alex Graca who is fighting through it in Portugal.

Being a father of two wonderful children, Jaia & Hari, giving any support to a children's charity and being able to give and provide any support to other parents and families is an honour and not entirely possible without your support.

I hope your support will give that little extra motivation, to me and the rest of the boys..

Thank you for anything you choose to give.

The team - Sabby, Mark, Adam, John, Roger, Jason, Chris, Tony, Eamon, Barny, Ian, Paul, Simon, Phillip and John our support driver.

Remember: Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never share them with anyone or send you unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. They'll make sure Gift Aid (an additional 25%) is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer, too. That means more money goes to the charity, faster, with JustGiving.