If you get to the bottom of this and reckon it’s worthwhile, I will hugely appreciate it.  I’m very conscious of the plethora of such things, let alone the economic climate. But I reckoned it was worth mentioning and won’t be remotely upset if you disregard it.

On the 24th of September I am going to try to swim to Africa.  Spain to Morocco.

I've wanted to do this for a long time, just fancied the idea of making my own way there, and figured it was now only going to get harder with each passing year! 

It will be a little tricky. I don’t quite know what will happen to my body after 4 hours’ swimming!  The training has redefined boredom, cold and pain, (7000+ lengths in the last 4 months alone, dawn sessions at weekends in Weymouth bay, long evenings in London pools) and the actual thing is going to be quite something. (You start from the kite-surfing capital of Europe (ie a bit windy), and negotiate one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, big currents, random flotsam and jetsam and whales. And great whites (“amigos blancos”) are recorded in the Straits just to spice it up, but I don’t think that’s a real concern.)

The motivation is to raise as much as I can for 2 causes.

Many of you will know my involvement with Tusk and I am raising money specifically for the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya. I can elaborate at length, but the reason I care about this is that NRT has developed a model for community-based conservation in a region close to my heart that has made a massive difference to the fortunes of people and wildlife there, and that can be exported right across the Continent, and beyond, with huge possibilities. They operate in areas of northern Kenya with extreme poverty, outbreaks of tribal war, poaching and extraordinary bio-diversity, and have demonstrated that conservation can really work, and on a basis that benefits everyone, bringing revenues, security, education and health facilities. It makes a massive difference and is largely scaleable across Africa.

www.tusk.org  (go to Projects/Kenya/Northern Rangelands)

The other cause is a new one for me, but it’s an orphanage in Somaliland. Just read the attached, it will give you an idea of the issues. It’s an unknown operation in an unknown corner of the world that is targeting a problem that’s about as forgotten and desperate as it gets. I’m probably going there in November.

I’ve set up a JustGiving page, link below, and this will be for Northern Rangelands/Tusk as the orphanage isn’t registered as a charity on their site. (If the latter strikes a chord, I will be giving donations direct to the guys who run it, so guess I will have to collect cash and cheques for that.) JustGiving seems the simplest way to donate, and allows any Gift Aid to be added automatically.

www.justgiving.com/Nick-Tims-AfricaSwim

Many thanks for considering this.  I sincerely hope that this will be the last time I do anything like this for a while!

Vbest

Nick