Fundraising Weekend

Thanks to everyone we met at the weekend, it was great to show off the van to unsuspecting members of the public and take their hard earned cash all in the name of charity! Seriously we all had a great weekend and we raised stacks of cash for the charities so thanks to all of you who contributed.

The weekend started with Ian and Tony grimacing but bravely stepping in a furry Rascal Van for the long journey from Birmingham to Tidworth (just outside Salisbury). Fortunately an eventful journey took Jen to her first destination of Chippenham to our good friend Tim the Bedford Rascal specialist. After much tuning and laughing at Ian's cowboy efforts a rejuvenated van was launched to tackle the A roads down to Tidworth at a mesmerising 60 miles an hour. (Pat on the back for Ian one fully running van!).

The first fundraising opportunity was the families' day of the 3rd Battalion Mercian Regiment. With much thanks to the CO we were allowed to gatecrash the event and park the van up swinging a bucket. Initially people were just amused at the sight of a furry van but once we explained our intention to drive two of the things to Africa we were met with what can only be described as hysterical laughter. Although the event was rather dampened with the lack of sunny skies and pitter-patter of rain drops people had a great time and we managed to fill the buckets with loot.

After the event we were all set to go out in Salisbury to sample the local brew fortunately sense prevailed and we knocked the idea on the head and headed to Dorset for a quiet night of pizza and Gin & Tonic. This being very much unlike us we slept uncomfortably worrying that we had become what we all dread, sensible!

Don't worry it wasn't going to last not with us sitting at the pub from lunchtime. The Fox Inn at Ansty just outside Blandford Forum provided our second fundraising platform. With massive thanks to the Landlords Ian and Abby we situated ourselves right outside the front door in prime position to harass people who had gone for a quiet Sunday lunch in the heart of rural Dorset. Meeting many great people and explaining our plans to very amused lunch goers resulted in further filling of our fundraising buckets!

After a successful day of rattling the buckets we set to our main task of the day running the Fabulous Fox's Furry Pub Quiz. After setting up and attacking the wonderful food from the kitchen the tables began to fill up and we were set to begin.

Thanks to Charlie the quiz ran perfectly with four rounds including general knowledge, music, film and sports, a bonus round of name the countries in the map of Africa and a raffle. The prizes for the raffle were all donated by local businesses in the Blandford area and were gratefully received by the winning participants. The winning team in the quiz with a score massively out in front were the originally named Norfolk N Chance! Each receiving a bottle of wine from Craig's parents wine rack (thanks ma and pa!) the winning team went off into the night knowing they were just better than everyone else!

Again thanks to everyone you helped out, came to the quiz, allowed us to bore them with tales of travelling across a desert in a clapped out van and especially to the Fox Inn who kindly donated £100 pounds to our cause.