Finally...
News of my final placement...
I'm going to be in the Moruca reserve teaching at Santa Rosa Secondary School. It sounds like a paradise: It's situated 5 hours from Georgetown (the capital) and involves traveling by speedboat on 3 different rivers! It is open-grassland that floods during the rainy season creating small islands linked by bridges!
My house has been renovated this year and there is a bedroom each and an open-plan seating area... there is a flush toilet and shower but NO RUNNING WATER! This has to be collected from the well at the end of the garden! Electricity is sometimes available for a couple of hours in the evening.
I will probably be in charge of science and maths (with my partner) for a form or 2 so between 100 - 200 students.
WOW i can't wait... only £480 to raise
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Ok...
So the challenge originally was to cycle from Land's End to John o' Groats... However this had to be altered as college wouldn't give us time off and parents kept mentioning this thing called A-levels??? So Milly and I decided to cycle from Cambridge to Land's End in 10 days... untrained...
The (original) Route:
This was the most unlucky week i have ever experienced...
The first couple of days was fairly easy. Met Roz on the first day for lunch ( a PT volunteer who i met on selection) in Bedford. Got very very wet in the evening and a little lost.
It was as we were cycling out of Wells towards Glastonbury that the first trouble occured...
My tyre was looking v. flat and so i stopped to pump it up but couldn't work the pump and in the process of trying to sort it out i let all the air out of it. So Milly (on easter sunday) cycled back in to the town to attempt to find a working pump while i sat on the side of the road guiltily. She returned 40 minutes later with a pump she'd bought from the only shop that was open in the town that just miraculously turned out to be Halfords though it was just closing! We arrived at Glastonbury...
The next morning my tyre was flat... so we mended the puncture in 15 mins but it took an hour to get both the inner and outer back on the wheel with me, Milly, and the two oldest Bacon boys all helping! So we left an hour and half late for what was to be the longest day. Within 7 miles of leaving the house the tyre was flat AGAIN and so from then on i pumped it up every 6 miles. Once at Bridgewater we'd caught up with ourselves and feeling rather proud stopped for some chocolate. Ahead was 11 easy miles along the canal to taunton where we could have lunch... However, we then met 27 mph winds coming straight at us and so instead of our average 14 mph we were traveling at about 6 mph and in 7 miles were completely exhausted. We were 1 hour late for lunch and shattered. We set off for Bampton at a slow pace still heading in to wind v. aware of large hills ahead and my deflating tyre. It got dark and hinted snow and we had 6 miles to go before Bampton (5 uphill) i pumped my tyre again and this time the whole valve snapped off, my tyre died. There was only one house in the vicinity and so after 40 mins of debating we walked to it and knocked and asked for help. The couple v. kindly gave us a lift to Bampton to a B&B, However in all the pa lava a bag was left on the side of the road outside the B&B and within 10 mins was gone...the one with the map...and... my camera, bike lights, tools, £15, the Bath house key.
The next day we woke up early and headed to Tiverton to get my wheel mended, we had to wait an hour and during this time wandered around in achey despair. We arrived at a church and decided that we may as well have a look inside and on entering met a kind priest who made us tea, gave us chocolate and listened to our tale of woe before producing... A MAP!!! We'd like to say many thanks to him though we don't have a name but his collie was named Bob...
We collected the tyre and went back to Bampton (by this time it was around 1 pm) we fitted the tyre on to the wheel but had to let out all the air in my tyre before it would fit and it was just after this that we realised that the pump had also been nicked! So we used the broken one to pump which did an extremely poor job and by the time we reached the top of the hill a couple of miles out of Bampton the tyre was flat AGAIN. Tired, angry phone calls to mum told us that the next 3 days were forecast to have winds of 40-50 mph directly at us and judging by the affect of when it was 'only' at 27mph we changed plans... a taxi took us to a bike shop (where i left my phone) and then to a station where we caught the train to Barnstaple and stayed with the Redwoods. That night we decided to get the train to penzance, cycle to Land's End and then back up to Bampton... it was the only way we were going to manage.
Mum came to meet us with the car to take our luggage between penzance and padstow... my bike tyre continued to deflate :( however we succeeded but instead of following the original plan of sustrans we decided generally to cut out the scenic parts and take the shorter routes on A or B roads... by that point we were just too exhausted...
The distance was 407 miles!
And thanks to everyone who sponsored... and sorry there are no photos...(obvious reasons)
xxx
So the challenge originally was to cycle from Land's End to John o' Groats... However this had to be altered as college wouldn't give us time off and parents kept mentioning this thing called A-levels??? So Milly and I decided to cycle from Cambridge to Land's End in 10 days... untrained...
The (original) Route:
- My house - Milton Keynes
- Milton Keynes - Newbury
- Newbury - Bath
- Bath - Glastonbury
- Glastonbury - Bampton
- Bampton - Barnstaple
- Barnstaple - Bude
- Bude - Padstow
- Padstow - Penzance
- Penzance - Land's End
This was the most unlucky week i have ever experienced...
The first couple of days was fairly easy. Met Roz on the first day for lunch ( a PT volunteer who i met on selection) in Bedford. Got very very wet in the evening and a little lost.
It was as we were cycling out of Wells towards Glastonbury that the first trouble occured...
My tyre was looking v. flat and so i stopped to pump it up but couldn't work the pump and in the process of trying to sort it out i let all the air out of it. So Milly (on easter sunday) cycled back in to the town to attempt to find a working pump while i sat on the side of the road guiltily. She returned 40 minutes later with a pump she'd bought from the only shop that was open in the town that just miraculously turned out to be Halfords though it was just closing! We arrived at Glastonbury...
The next morning my tyre was flat... so we mended the puncture in 15 mins but it took an hour to get both the inner and outer back on the wheel with me, Milly, and the two oldest Bacon boys all helping! So we left an hour and half late for what was to be the longest day. Within 7 miles of leaving the house the tyre was flat AGAIN and so from then on i pumped it up every 6 miles. Once at Bridgewater we'd caught up with ourselves and feeling rather proud stopped for some chocolate. Ahead was 11 easy miles along the canal to taunton where we could have lunch... However, we then met 27 mph winds coming straight at us and so instead of our average 14 mph we were traveling at about 6 mph and in 7 miles were completely exhausted. We were 1 hour late for lunch and shattered. We set off for Bampton at a slow pace still heading in to wind v. aware of large hills ahead and my deflating tyre. It got dark and hinted snow and we had 6 miles to go before Bampton (5 uphill) i pumped my tyre again and this time the whole valve snapped off, my tyre died. There was only one house in the vicinity and so after 40 mins of debating we walked to it and knocked and asked for help. The couple v. kindly gave us a lift to Bampton to a B&B, However in all the pa lava a bag was left on the side of the road outside the B&B and within 10 mins was gone...the one with the map...and... my camera, bike lights, tools, £15, the Bath house key.
The next day we woke up early and headed to Tiverton to get my wheel mended, we had to wait an hour and during this time wandered around in achey despair. We arrived at a church and decided that we may as well have a look inside and on entering met a kind priest who made us tea, gave us chocolate and listened to our tale of woe before producing... A MAP!!! We'd like to say many thanks to him though we don't have a name but his collie was named Bob...
We collected the tyre and went back to Bampton (by this time it was around 1 pm) we fitted the tyre on to the wheel but had to let out all the air in my tyre before it would fit and it was just after this that we realised that the pump had also been nicked! So we used the broken one to pump which did an extremely poor job and by the time we reached the top of the hill a couple of miles out of Bampton the tyre was flat AGAIN. Tired, angry phone calls to mum told us that the next 3 days were forecast to have winds of 40-50 mph directly at us and judging by the affect of when it was 'only' at 27mph we changed plans... a taxi took us to a bike shop (where i left my phone) and then to a station where we caught the train to Barnstaple and stayed with the Redwoods. That night we decided to get the train to penzance, cycle to Land's End and then back up to Bampton... it was the only way we were going to manage.
Mum came to meet us with the car to take our luggage between penzance and padstow... my bike tyre continued to deflate :( however we succeeded but instead of following the original plan of sustrans we decided generally to cut out the scenic parts and take the shorter routes on A or B roads... by that point we were just too exhausted...
The distance was 407 miles!
And thanks to everyone who sponsored... and sorry there are no photos...(obvious reasons)
xxx
Some Catching up...
Big thank-you again to St. Ives Rotary club for your donation and for the meal that we had before the presentation. Also an extra thank-you from Milly R., who you also decided to donate £100 to.
Since Christmas 3 more Hills Roaders have joined Project Trust: Milly who is also going to Guyana, Chris who is going to Uganda and Edmund who is going out to Hills Road's partner school Ndamse in Umthatha, South Africa (a new project).
I'd also like to thank Coleridge Secondary School for donating some money raised from an own clothes day.
Next to the story of the cycling...
Since Christmas 3 more Hills Roaders have joined Project Trust: Milly who is also going to Guyana, Chris who is going to Uganda and Edmund who is going out to Hills Road's partner school Ndamse in Umthatha, South Africa (a new project).
I'd also like to thank Coleridge Secondary School for donating some money raised from an own clothes day.
Next to the story of the cycling...
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