Those of you that know Lee and myself, know that we are both very competetive and we love a good challenge. We had a think and came up with the Devizes to Westminster Boat Race....

The Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Race (DW) starts in Devizes, Wiltshire and finishes just downstream of Westminster Bridge in London, opposite the Houses of Parliament. The race is 125 miles long and has 77 portages en-route. It is one of the toughest endurance events in the world and is open to anyone with the necessary determination and commitment to train for it.

If we didn't think this event would be hard enough we have decided to enter the race with a Canadian Canoe built for white water as opposed to a streamline kayak built for speed.

Please help us raise as much money for Willen Hospice...a local hospice based in Milton Keynes where we both grew up. The Hospice offers specialist physical, emotional, spiritual and practical support to people with life limiting conditions, at differing stages of the illness.

All donations will be greatly appreciated whether they are £1 or £100. This is a challenge unlike no other we have taken on before. Dead or alive we will finish.

13/03/2010 - This saw our first big outing onto the river Thames. We started at around Henley and conveniently finished at the Harvester pub in Old Windsor. It didn't get off to a good start as i found myself walking backwards with the boat and into the river to everybody else's amusement.

Its safe to say we were not very prepared for this trip, we realised we had no food and after a few hours found ourselves being very hungry, so we had to stop half way to get a bacon bap from a very welcome crazy golf establishment. Also through Lee's expert directing we ended up down the wrong channel of the river where we could not portage and wasted around 40minutes. Apart from that the 21 mile journey took us around 6hrs .... quite worrying when you think the actual race is 6 times the distance. Next week will see us tackle another long stretch of the Thames.

20/03/2010 - Today saw us venture back out on the Thames starting at Runnymede and aiming to finish up at Hampton Court. This time we were prepared with our support crew meeting us every 5miles for food and drinks. Everything was running so smoothly and quickly untill we made it to the Hampton stretch....... We found ourselves rowing down the middle of a race track and realised that everyone was lining up to start a boat race. To our sheer embarresment we ducked our heads and paddled as hard as we could to where we were finishing which was around 500m away. To make it all the more embarressing, we had to hold on to a motor boat to drag us along the stretch where people were laughing and our support crew watching with a cold beer on the riverbank waiting for us.