Although we're still putting our rigorous training plan together, which is due to start in November, we thought we'd take the opportunity on a sunny Saturday afternoon to get into the swing of things and complete a short 5-mile walk.  We bought a book on walks in Wiltshire, and headed to Great Bedwyn for the afternoon.  It was a fairly easy walk, and took us two hours altogether, during which time we learnt that:

*It's better for Matt to walk in front otherwise he treads on my heels

*I burn off a lot more calories as Matt's strides are about six times as long as mine

*We both need to buy a proper jacket/coat/waterproof and trousers for our training walks

*I really need to buy a pair of walking boots sooner rather than later

*We are going to get very wet and muddy training through the winter

*Neither of us are very fit and we need to do a lot of training

*It's going to be harder than we thought - times the distance of that walk by ten, fit it in to only three additional days, add ridiculously steep hills, a heavy backpack, hot sunshine and below freezing temperatures at night, and take away a lot of oxygen from the air we're breathing, and that takes us a little closer to what we're going to have to do in just over six months time!

Our next mission will be next Saturday, although we're still undecided on where we will go for our second training walk...we'll keep you posted!

First and foremost, thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all of you that attended the Ball or donated prizes or helped in any other way.  We really can't thank you enough!  Around 50 people attended the night in the end, and it really did mean so much that you were there supporting us.

We have counted up the pennies and, including profits from ticket sales, we raised a MASSIVE £1,821.91. 

Everybody seemed to enjoy having a flutter on the casino tables and the caricaturist was a great hit too!  Big winners of the night were Derek Viljoen, who won the most on the casinos and took home the huge suitcase hamper, and Gary Heffer, who took away the giant martini glass as he was closest to guessing there were 137 sweets inside.

We are now well on our way to hitting our fundraising target, and we will be in touch soon with details of any other events we'll be holding.  Our focus for the next few weeks is get a programme into place and start training!

If anybody has any photos from the Ball, please email them to me at [email protected].  You can see some of the photos on the Events Page.

As most of you know, both of us have had a stomach bug over the last few days, which has put a slight halt on preparations!  Luckily most things are already sorted so we're not too far behind.  We're both feeling much better today so fortunately we caught the bug early enough so that we're ok in time for the ball.

We're really excited now, and looking forward to seeing you all there.

For those of you that can't make it, we've posted details of the auction items on the events page, so please take a look and contact us if you would like to make a proxy bid on any items.

It's less than a week till the Ball and final preparations are well under way!  We've now sold the majority of the tickets we wanted to and we're really pleased with the donations received for the auction, but we do still have tickets available if anyone else can make it - keep on asking all friends and family!! 

The list of auction items will be posted on this website, so if any of you are unable to come to the Ball but would like to make a proxy bid on an item, please let us know. 

We're looking forward to seeing you all there.  Start getting those outfits ready!