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Click here for the gallery
The CBF triathlon was everything we hoped for and much harder than most people expected. We started at 8.00am with a beautiful canoe around Peel Island or Wild Cat Island as it was called in the film Swallows and Amazons. It was tough on the shoulders but actually really good fun and took about an hour and a quarter.
We then cycled for a couple of hours including climbing the Honister pass which is one of the steepest climbs in the UK with gradients up to 1 in 4. The next challenge was to climb up Haystacks which took 3 hours, stunning but harder than we all expected, particularly the way down. The last leg was a 13 mile cycle ride which we were not to excited to learn included another exhausting, seemingly never ending, climb.
We hit the finish line at around 5pm, exhausted but happy!
There are plenty of photos of the event here.
The prize of a week in the villa
All our supporters, including those who donated, took part, gave their time for free, who like our Facebook page and are on our mailing list were entered into a draw to win a week in a villa in Spain. The prize was won by Anya Roberts who kindly sponsored Matt and Andrea Starbuck. Congratulations!
The Aim
We are very close now to the £100,000 we have been quoted to renovate the children's wards and St George's in Tooting and have pledged to raise all that amount. If you were planning to sponsor somebody partaking and haven't got around to it yet, please do so now and help us meet our target. If you have already sponsored somebody, thank you so much, we really do appreciate it and we guarantee that every penny raised will go to improving the lives of ill children staying in often very frightening and uncomfortable wards.
Click here to donate or track the amount raised, a list of all the people who participated, together with their fund raising page is at the bottom.
To all those who took part, thank you for making such an incredible effort with the fund raising and with the challenge itself. It was a genuine pleasure to spend the weekend with you. Please share or forward this email to your sponsors as a way of thanking them from us.
Lots of love,
Peter and Claudia Blandford
Peter and Claudia
Peter, Claudia and the rest of the trustees would like to thank all the incredible people who took part this year and made such an enormous effort in the fund raising. We would also, of course, like to thank everybody who supported this fantastic cause by sponsoring one of their friends in the event.
We appreciate that most of you must get asked to support various causes frequently, so we are particularly grateful to so many of you who chose to dig deep and support us this year. We are in discussions with St George's and thanks to you wonderful participants and sponsors, the refurbishment of the children's ward should be underway soon.
The sign ups for the CBF Triathlon are going really well and we are very excited that there will be nearly 50 of us taking part. On the 18th May we are going up to the Lake District and having a fantastic weekend while hopefully raising £100,000 to completely refurbish the children's ward at St George's Hospital.
We would love it if another few people joined us. If you are partaking, can we please ask you to forward this to others who may be interested in going with you? It would be fantastic if we could get the number up to 60 participants.
If you need to pull the heartstrings, feel free to use this video!
If you want to appeal to the wallet strings point out that The Christian Blandford Fund does not pay any trustees or staff and 100% of the money raised will go to our aim of improving the lives of seriously ill children, particularly those affected by cancer.
Thank you,
Peter and Claudia Blandford
We have spent over 10 years trying to push for these improvements so are delighted with the news. Thank you Darren Bowler, one of the CBF trustees for your perseverance in pushing this forward.
This brings us nicely to the next hurdle, the £100,000! If you can not join us for the triathlon but would like to help please consider sponsoring me and Claudia 
