A Kayak instructor from Holyhead in Wales will be keeping an important promise when he sets out on June 20th to kayak 900 miles around the entire coastline of Ireland.
Simon Osborne, 24, is undertaking this mammoth adventure in memory of his older brother Mark, who was just 13 years old when he died of leukaemia in 1989. Following a successful circumnavigation of the British Isles in 2002, Simon is now taking on the new challenge to raise even more money for his nominated charity, Leukaemia Research.
“I think the expedition will take around six weeks to complete - at an average of 4 miles an hour - that’s 225 hours of kayaking. This trip will be very different to my last one as I kayak the entire journey alone,” Simon explains. He believes the exposed west coast will be the most difficult section of journey as there will be large swells from the Atlantic.
“Losing my brother has given me a huge amount of motivation,” he says “I promised myself that I would do all I could to raise as much money as I could for the Leukaemia Research. I only have to think about what he went through to put the size of my challenge into perspective." He is hoping to raise thousands of pounds and is keen to get sponsorship from as many people as he possibly can. His last trip round Britain took three months and raised £20,000 for the charity.
Simon will be setting off on his journey from Holyhead on June 20th and will cross the Irish Sea to Dublin, and he will be heading around the coast in a clockwise direction. Simon needs all the support he can get so please visit his website at www.kayakingforcancer.co.uk.
Simon is also running a competition to win the expedition kayak to help me raise money for Leukaemia Research. All you have to do is guess online at www.justgiving.com/kfc the number of hours minutes and seconds it will take him to complete the trip.
