Phil Evans

We did our traditional birthday walk up the ltchen today- the older two of us decided walking to Winchester (8.5miles/ 13.7km) wasn’t enough so we walked back (another 6miles/ 1okm) to a pub for a very tasty dinner.

Training requires good nutrition and motivation!

Another exciting day for the JOGLE team- we were interviewed during the One Community slot on Unity 101 Radio Station! It was great, if a little nerve racking , to share our message and we must say a huge thank you to Lisa-Jane for making us feel so at ease with our first interview. Incidentally, Ollie was the youngest person Lisa-Jane had interviewed on air and he did a fantastic job of promoting our epic summer fundraising mission. If fact he did such a good job we got invited back to tell them how we did after the summer!

Listen to our interview here- The Woggle JOGLE Team on Unity 101

Its a super exciting day today as the amazing team at Outside and Active have featured our amazing adventure on their website! This is massive step forward for us in publicising our adventure so we can share it beyond the realms of social media and reach others who might be interested and want to support us!

If you want to read the feature (and who wouldn’t!) find it here.

Phew- it was a totally different type of training this weekend. We went up to Birmingham to attend the The National Outdoor Expo. We did less miles but miles more talking and networking (which is probably more exhausting!) We had the chance to chat to an amazing array of people including scouts from all over the UK, a couple of the Scout ambassadors, some celebrities who love the outdoors and some innovative and brilliant companies.

We realised that the younger two make a very enthusiastic sales team moving smoothly from describing our adventure to plugging our badges and woggles (available here– I think I’m learning from them!)

We have some fabulously exciting collaborations in the pipeline following this weekend- more to come on this!

We got the message loud and clear that we definitely need to be on Instagram (and possibly TikTok which was Nighthawk ESU advice) and so we are opening an account. We have however, been temporarily blocked for 24 hours so watch this space. We choose to believe that this is the algorithm error and not a user error…..

Another first for us- a full team training walk on a lovely Sunday morning! We managed just over 14km around the beautiful coast of Lymington in the New Forest. This was a real achievement as this is a similar distance to our planned day 12 of the JOGLE:- Kinlochleven to Kings House. We were joined by family and the irrepressible but very cute Moby (the dog, not the musician) who entertained us all as we went. It was certainly a little chilly in the wind but we all survived without developing hypothermia!

A small part of the team completed a training ride over the weekend and managed around a 23k cycle (with a lovely lunch in the middle!). It was drizzly and slippery all day but we only had one accident- a lamppost jumped out (apparently) and resulted in a grazed knee!

Learning points

Make sure you’re dressed for the weather- a cold boy is a grumpy boy. Interestingly cycling mitts make all the difference!

Watch out for lampposts- they are obviously faster and more cunning than they look

Josies in Romsey is a lovely cafe and caters for gluten-free too!

Over the last 24 hours we have started to spread the word about this fantastic mission. Having spent a few weeks trawling the internet for the contact details of as many Scout County and District teams as possible, we sent out our first email. Within a few hours we had received messages back of amazing encouragement and offers of support and places to stay. Our hearts are warmed by the enthusiasm for this project. It’s feeling rather real now.