Andrew’s challenge # 3

6 June 2021
Andrew and the Hall

After hurting my back in February, I was forced to cease my sea swimming! then I fell off my brother’s tricycle and bust a rib, much to his amusement… I’m never playing in his garden again!

Update from June 2021: ” Hello you terrific Swim Supporters. I’m nearly there! Only 1, 325 strokes to swim! I saw my fist jellyfish at Finstown slip. The water there is warmer, but it is a warning. I must hurry to get my challenge finished before we are inundated with the naughty nautical menaces!
So… It won’t be long now. I’ managing 330 strokes in a session. Let’s hope it remains chilly for June whilst my John Rae challenge to do one stroke for every mile he sailed in his Arctic Expeditions, and that was around 7,600!

Do urge me along with donations and sponsorship.

Many thanks,

Andrew. President of The John Rae Society.”

Previous post: Anyway, I’m now recovered and recommenced. I did 110 strokes at Aikerness yesterday and 220 early this morning. My sponsored challenge of 6,700 strokes of wild swimming is now at 5,660. Highly achievable indeed. In the depths of winter I could only manage 55 strokes as it was SO cold.

The thing about sea swimming is it makes one feel so very healthy and fit. I look forward to a morning swim tomorrow and the next day.

Do please keep up the sponsorship. The John Rae Society needs the money. The more we achieve, the more we need. It’s like that.

Hello all you generous sports.

Starting a challenge is far more of a challenge than actually doing it! This is what I found when I wild swam a stroke for each of the 3,645 miles that John Rae trekked during his now increasingly famous Arctic Expeditions.

My new challenge for 2021 is to swim the 6,700 strokes per mile that John Rae sailed in his remarkable journeys. I’ve been thinking too long of this, so I started this morning, 20th December at 11.07 a.m. I completed 444 of the required strokes in the coolness of Aikerness Bay! This leaves only shivery strokes 6,256  to go!

I am looking for 111 sponsors at just one penny a mile. Folk can sponsor more if they will. The Hall of Clestrain’s crumbling roof urgently needing emergency repair work! There is archaeological equipment to pay for for next season’s excavations: The insurance is well over a thousand pounds per annum! It would be very good if we improved our IT resources, so that our superb Membership Secretary could upgrade, making her life much easier. Sponsor at our JustGiving page

Believe me, I will complete this new challenge. If you want to take the plunge and do your sponsorship now, I would be utterly grateful. This will mean we can get on with these aims immediately.

I just realised are looking for fencing posts to fence the ground where the new access road to the Hall of Clestrain will go. We need to buy fencing wire. Diesel for a volunteer’s mechanical digger. Whenever a list ends, something else crops up, doesn’t it.

So please do spread this around your friends. The John Rae Society really means business and money to achieve so many little and large tasks.

Thank you,

Andrew Appleby.

President of The John Rae Society.

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