As most of you know, I am part of a wonderful club - North Norfolk Surf Lifesaving Club (NNSLSC) staffed entirely by volunteers who give their time to train, educate, coach and qualify 100's of participants each year.

We have clubbies from ages 7-70 and all the training, fitness sessions, coaching, equipment and facilities we provide for free. Long may this continue and grow.

Our stuff gets battered by the North Sea and we need to upgrade, repair and replace a lot of our lifesaving equipment as the club has grown x3 since the pandemic. It is a very important facility, and we don't relax our efforts.

We train and qualify the RNLI beach lifeguards, organise the successful Women in Waves summer programme to increase confidence and esteem, deliver 5 training sessions per week for 7 months of the year and weekly winter training, outside of this we fundraise year-round to provide this resource at no cost.

By the time you see a 'look how young they are!' lifeguard on a UK beach, there's a chance that they have 9 years training and experience before putting on the yellow top. That’s part of what a lifesaving club like ours does as well as being a community hub that welcomes everyone to come and train with us.

In the past we have swam the Solent, completed a West to East UK bike ride, raced 20-mile assault courses, climbed Denali in Alaska and just hosted our 10th annual trail run.

The next challenge for Alan Millard and I will be to take the summit of Aconcagua in Argentina in January 2023 - all being well. It's 22,838ft, nearly 7km into the sky.

I am looking to raise funds for 2 things, my club which I care so dearly for and to provide a mission critical piece of equipment (Rescue Ski) for the utterly selfless and courageous volunteer guards at Jaco Beach in Costa Rica who I worked with in April this year.

This piece of equipment would half the drownings on Jaco beach immediately. A 6 km beach, the busiest in CR and guarded by volunteers with very little equipment or support - imagine a 2k beach run at full speed just to get to the rescue area. A Rescue Ski would be there in seconds.

The week I was with Marchen, Pakos, David and Pablo - 4 of the bravest people I have met - there were 550 preventions, 25 rescues and sadly 4 lives lost (men, 3 of whom fathers) A ski will make an indescribable difference.

So please be kind, your support makes an immediate difference and will inspire Alan and I to keep going uphill toward that summit in January.

Many Thanks

Mike