After a couple of quiet weeks, with Andy burying his head in books studying, me getting used to a nocturnal life with my new born son and not a lot of success with the motorhome issue, last week was one of the more positive we have experienced. Last Sunday the 4 of us, that's Andy and I and our two strong support team of Ian (Barmy) and Simon, got together to see exactly where we were and what plans we needed progress or put in place. Motor home and course confirmation figured quite highly on the agenda along with trying to find ourselves some major sponsors for balls, shoes and shirts, sorting out the website and the Manchester Golf Show. As most meetings go the agenda went out of the window after about 2 minutes and we had gone in about 7 different tangents before we'd had half a pint. I think in the end we came away with a few actions but not really much clearer on what success looked like. The major decision made was that we were going to have to pay to hire the motor home. Thankfully through the generosity of parents we had two contributions to our challenge budget that would cover about half of cost, we were looking at a bill of over £1,000 for a vehicle before we'd put any fuel in it, so this was a big help. Monday arrived and I'd spent much of the night feeding, winding and rocking whilst filling the times between scouring the web for motor home options. Andy was following up the leads we already had to see if there was any hope there but by Tuesday morning we still had nothing. Nothing, that is on the motor home front...
I had previously found the London Golf Show twitter account and whilst attempting to find the dates also came across the Manchester Golf Show account. I've always fancied going to one of these but never got round to it in the past but it did make me think that it might be a good opportunity to meet a very large number of people all of whom share one thing in common, golf. Now if ever there was an audience to promote our challenge to, this has got to be it, trades and public all in the same place all there to talk, play, live and breath golf. I floated the idea with the team on Sunday and agreed we should inquire, which I did, on Monday. After a very positive conversation with the MD of the company behind the show we have a stand on block F60 and a short slot on the stage each day to promote our challenge!!! So we're going to Manchester from 25th - 27th April where we hope to promote our challenge, collect some sponsorship and see if we can do a bit of networking and find a few major sponsors from some of the other exhibitors. If you're planning on attending pop along and see us to find out a bit more about us, have a go at our challenge sweep stake or even sponsor a hole. If you're from a golf company and interested in going a step further in sponsorship then get in touch before hand and we could be promoting your involvement at the event.
So it's Tuesday and we're confirming the show and following up another motor home option. We'd finally found one available (within budget, but in Durham), filled in our details and awaited the confirmation. A couple of hours later and the booking's confirmed, Result!! At the same time, Rachel had come back to us confirming that Concra Wood were definitely on board, Ballyclare are interested and just awaiting confirmation and that Tourism Ireland are covering costs of ferries and accommodation for the Irish leg of our challenge, Result x 2!! Two days work and we were pretty pleased with the result
Wednesday comes along we get an email from the booking company about excess mileage costs giving us an additional £175 to our already increasing challenge costs. No sooner had we digested this information then it all became irrelevant. Marquis Leisure, a company we had contacted a couple of weeks ago came back to us. In return for some PR and publicity for their business and the MD and his daughter (plays off 6) to join us for a few holes on the last day, they would provide a vehicle for us for the Scotland - Wales - English legs. I couldn't believe the offer or the irony of the timing! We very quickly accepted the very generous offer and almost as quickly cancelled our previous booking. So we now have a new major sponsor and you should see their details to the right on our new look blog page. If you have any motor home needs we'd recommend you check them out.
So the final piece of the week comes from the first of our challenge supporters - Kevin Brown at Today's Golfer Magazine. As you know from previous posts Kevin has been helping is since the start to find the courses and promote our challenge. On Wednesday he confirmed that Portpatrick are on board for the Scottish leg of our challenge and that he had posted the first article about our challenge on Today's Golfer's Website - there's a link to it on the right too. Kevin has all the details of our challenge and will be penning an article to go into the April edition of the magazine out on 17th, so make sure you grab a copy and check it out.
Bit of a long post this time but hopefully you've stuck with it. Things are really taking shape and we're looking for more people to get involved, individuals, groups and companies. You can see that our blog page has been updated with a number of links which we encourage you to check out. We're in the process of building our webpage but that should be here soon and will have more content about our challenge. There's also a link to our donation page if you're feeling generous and want to support us for a great cause - My niece has pledged the first donation, which we are very proud of her for - it's her mum, Nancy, that tragically passed away from a brain tumour.
If you want to get involved follow us at @five5sgolf and send us a tweet or email us at Five5sgolfchallenge@gmail.com
Thanks for taking the time to read
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