Dangling, running, cycling – our supporters take it one step beyond!

It’s been a busy month for the fundraising team, but not as busy as it’s been for some of our supporters!

We started off the month with the Forth Rail Bridge Abseil on the 8th May.

Our three daring ladies headed down to South Queensferry to join the rest of the 400 strong group of people, all determined to abseil the 165ft from the Forth Rail Bridge to the beach, SAS style, while raising more than £120,000 for their chosen charities.

The day started off a little on the damp side and it looked like our girls might get a soaking even though the tide was out. Luckily fate smiled on them and the sun came out just in time to see Dorothy (Win) head over the rainbow swiftly followed by Kathie and Kim (in fact so swiftly followed by Kathie that there was a sharp intake of breath from the crowd – we think Kathie might have been a stunt double for one of Charlie’s Angels!). Even Toto got in on the act, donning a Waverley Care t-shirt and insisting on having his basket attached to Dorothy for the descent. You can watch the video of our three amazing volunteers taking part in the abseil on our YouTube channel.

We’ll be hearing more from Buddy Kim soon as taking part in one challenge just wasn’t enough. Kim has decided that good things come in three’s and as well as the abseil she will be running the Stornoway Half Marathon on the 28th May (that’s next weekend so get sponsoring) and trying to beat last year’s time of 1hr 56mins in the Hoy Half Marathon on the 12th June.

To keep us on our toes the weekend after the abseil some of us pedalled out to East Lothian for a training session with Lynne for her London to Paris challenge.

In just over a week Lynne will be heading down to London with her bike to take part in the London to Paris Bike Ride, 310 miles of cycling through the English and French countryside. Lynne’s been told to expect undulating countryside but just in case that’s code for hilly she’s been doing some training on Arthur’s Seat as well as speeding up the hills in East Lothian (she can fly up a hill without slowing down or stopping talking!)

We’ll be keeping in touch with Lynne throughout her challenge so if you want to keep up-to-date you can Follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook. You can also show your support for Lynne as well as getting a lovely little bar of sweetness by handing over a pound in the Blue Moon Cafe, Curiouser and Curiouser or Nom De Plume on Broughton Street and getting a bar of Tartan Tablet, homemade by our volunteer June.

As if all this excitement and exercise wasn’t enough we were at it again this weekend at the Edinburgh Marathon on Sunday. 20 runners, including 6 members of staff braved the wind and rain to get round the 26.2 mile course. Lucy, Emma, Russell and Oliver all ran the full marathon. Hopefully now it’s all over they can have a well deserved rest after all the training….all except for Russell who will be running in the Bathgate Half Marathon on 19th June!

We also had 4 Hairy Haggis relay teams (the Belles & the Bows, Motley Crew and Dave’s Team) taking part in the marathon and all of them made it round the course unscathed. Although we couldn’t get too near to the race track due to the new finish line layout we did manage to cheer some of our haggises near the end of the race and managed to meet up with the majority of our runners afterwards to supply hugs, sandwiches and chocolate brownies. ( We think the brownies proved most popular!)

Between them so far all these amazing people have dangled over hundreds of feet, and ran and cycled hundreds of miles to raise more than £7000 to support our services and we would like to thank them all. Without their support we would not be able to continue with our work making a positive difference to the lives of people living with HIV and Hepatitis C.

Below you can see some of our runners looking very dapper in their Waverley Care t-shirts.