We are sponsoring The 500 Mile Pedalo in their mission to pedalo round the Scottish coast. Their latest newsletter is reproduced below to highlight their epic endeavours.

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First of all, thank you to everyone for the amazing level of support we have been getting – it is really helping us with our hours of training and admin to know how much behind us everyone is.

So, two weekends ago (July 13) was our final test of the pedalo following its repair by the boatyard (see below) and we are pleased to report we managed a full four hours of proper pedalling without incident. Result!

The next week

Today marks 10 days from the official launch (umm…. nervous and exciting!) and over the next week and a half we will be sending you lots of awesome emails, including a video from HSBC TV, a partnership with Malkin and Toad and many more exciting ways for you to get involved when we are pedaloing round Scotland.

As a thank you to everyone who has been involved so far we made this video.

Start date

We are now prepping the boat, ourselves and our bags for the trip up north to Inverness. If you want to see us off please come to the Caley Marina Canal Rd, Inverness, Invernesshire IV3 8NF on 2 August for 9.30am to see us launch the 500-Mile Pedalo adventure!

We are so excited to be starting the trip that has been so long in the making, and couldn’t have got this far without all the amazing support from family, friends and other people keen to support the two amazing causes we are raising money for with this trip – Cancer Research UK and Parkinson’s UK.

We haven’t reached our target yet, though, so please help us do so by donating at www.virginmoneygiving.com/pedalo or text ‘SOAK48 £5’ to 70070 to donate today.

Preparation

It’s been a busy few months for Team Pedalo, here’s what we’ve been up to:

The Launch (18 May)

For all who attended our launch at the London Corinthian Sailing Club on Sunday 18 May, thank you SO much for making the day such a great success.
The sun was shining, Big Tom Bloody Marys were flowing and Good and Proper Tea was dishing out delicious iced teas to the line of men wearily climbing off the Wattbike after testing their pedalling power against the 500-Mile Pedalo team!

Mutly was on excellent form – showing off her new paint job (thank you to Gurjit Dhillon and his family for hosting Mutly for the paint job!) and all our fabulous sponsors – sitting out on the public footpath. Lots of passers-by were shocked to see a Loch Ness Monster hanging out in Chiswick rather than Loch Ness!

When it came to the official launch into the Thames, the team pedalled off to a round of applause… only to lose the skeg chain shortly after and drift back past the watching crowd… We did manage to collect ourselves, though, and made it back to shore, quite red faced…

With some amazing raffle prizes on offer the tickets sold like hotcakes and with the proceeds of the bacon butties, the Wattbikes and the bar, we raised over £5,000 on the day.

Lake testing (7/8 June)

Following the launch there were a few niggles with the pedalo, so Mutly went back to Southampton to be fixed by the amazingly patient and knowledgeable Southampton University students (all during the course of their finals!). We then took Jonathan (one of the long-suffering team of students) and Mutly to Lechlade for a lake test.

All started out well with beautiful sunshine and exclamations from Jonathan that the pedalo was running incredibly well – until we broke the driveshaft (see a description of this on our training video here: https://vimeo.com/98149607.

After some serious manual labour, and a lesson in engineering from Jonathan, we managed to get the pedalo working again in time for a successful test on Sunday where we got up to speeds of 5 knots (c. 5mph) – an absolute result! Best part of the day, though, was Sholto managing to fall off the boat mid-pee and lose his shorts – we’re hoping he keeps up those kind of antics for the trip.

The sea test (22 June)

On the weekend of the Round the Island sailing race, we towed our pedalo to the Isle of Wight for some shameless publicity grabbing and our all-important sea test of the pedalo.

With some amazing weather the team got up at 6am on Saturday morning to get the pedalo onto the Royal Parade in full view of the crowds (with a film crew in tow no less!). Highlights included Tash finding it surprisingly difficult to give away Mutly-shaped cookies to passers-by and the launch of the #pedalopose on Facebook.

Sunday’s test started out well with the team getting some pretty good speeds up even with a headwind and in the face of some pretty choppy seas (handmade in the face of a calm day by our support boat captain Jeremy Smith!).

Unfortunately, though, we once again broke the shear pin after a couple of hours, which put a stop to the test. Luckily we’d had enough time on the water to know we should be fine in rough seas (up to the safe limit we’ve agreed with our official support crew) and knew how to fix the problem, so we sent the pedalo off to the boatyard with cautious optimism… It returned magnificent and we’re confident we have the best chance possible of completing these mad mission.

We hope to see as many of you as possible at the launch on August 2.

The 500-Mile Pedalo team xx