Kenya 2011

We’ve thought of a new way to raise some money to help us build schools in Kenya – complete the 3 Peaks Challenge. That’s climb the highest mountain in Scotland – Ben Nevis, England – Scafel Pike and Wales – Snowdon, in 24 hours.
This week we had our first training session – a gentle introduction to what they will need to complete at the end of April. A small group headed off to Crook’s Peak, near Cheddar and climbed up to the trig point and then on to the second summit. It was announced that this was just under a 10th of the smallest mountain they will be climbing in April. Look out for more photos and regular updates on how they are doing.

6 of the intrepid explorers

Just to let you now we will be putting up information about team events for fund raising and social events like our yearly get together at Cosmo in Sept/Oct. We will also be adding information about our plans for the Mini Olympics next year and how we are hoping to attract sponsorship for next years expedition – which is likely to be our biggest yet!
As well as all that – we are also considering the next stage in our link with the peoples of Kenya – We have helped build a school – as you know in 2003 Inspirations had 48 pupils – by the end of 2012 it will have the capacity to take 800 (it already has 500 now!). We have a very strong link with the school, and we are now looking to see what we can do from 2012. One possible plan is to buy some land north of Mombasa and build a Orphanage, there is a high number of homeless children in Kenya and a real need to provide a secure home and education for these children.
So please do keep following the blog and let us know your thoughts, or offers of help or ideas for the future of Ashton Park Schools on going partnership with Inspirations School and the people of Kenya.

Hi all,
Just to let you know we have put up 6 new galleries from the safari giving you a taste of what we saw. Team members will get all of the photos on disc after the holidays.

For those of you who like the technical stuff on photography – this picture was taken with a 300mm zoom lens, F2.8, mounted on a tripod with a 2.8 Sec. exposure – it was in the middle of the night – with a green floodlight off to the right of the leopard – hence the light shading of green!

Landed early. Good flight and all the travelling has gone to plan. Now stuck on the M4 because of a van carrying illicit French beer has crashed…sounds like the start of a joke! On target to be back at school at 8 or possibly slightly before but we will ring at Swindon. Looking forward to seeing everyone.

Hi all, a quick update – we are now waiting in the departures lounge, everyone sleepy after eating too much at Carnivore last Night. The Winner of the Meat Muncher award was Richard – he managed to eat 18 different types of meat including Crocodile, Camel, Buffalo Testicles, Ox Heart and Ostrich. Needless to say he looked as if he was 9 months pregnant when he went to bed last night.
We have now spent the last of our pennies on duty free and are waiting for the flight home – which we have been told will be departing on time – so we should be home as planned (see yesterdays blog for details)
And I would like to thank Emma’s Mum for all the kisses and the lovely comment about her loving me more than Emma – which is totally understandable.

Just a quick blog to let you all know we have arrived in Nairobi. We are at the Kenya Comfort Hotel – in the middle of the business section (This is the sister hotel to the one we used last year). In an hours time we will be heading off to Carnivore for our end-of-expedition meal. Its been great fun and I believe everyone has got something out of the experience. We should be on time flying out tomorrow on flight VS672 from Nairobi – departing at 09:50. We will be arriving in LHR at about 17:00, so should be back at Ashton Park School by 20:00 assuming we have no problems with coach, motorway or baggage claim! We will ring you all once we are past swindon to let you know how we are getting on.
I do hope you all enjoyed the blog – we should have day 1 of the Safari up as a small gallery later today, so please do enjoy! We will add more tomorrow once we are back. Thank you all for following the blog and supporting the work our students have done, Its been great for them to see how many people are following us (We had over 800 hits on the blog in one day! and well over 10,000 hits while we have been here!!!) Please do encourage everyone to keep supporting us as we raise funds for next years expedition – We are hoping to build 2 more classrooms and we may be looking for some land to buy north on Mombasa to start building an orphanage in 2 years time… So plenty to do…..
Paul, Charlie, Richard & Mark x

Hi all,
Where to start….. Probably seeing 2 lions within 10 minutes of starting our all day game drive (we were up at 05:30!!!) set the standard for the rest of the day…. apparently the 2 lions were juveniles and are likely to be the nucleus of a new pride in Amboseli. This was followed by the totally bizarre sight of a very large bull elephant doing morning yoga by a mound of earth (I kid you not! – what till you see the pictures). Then we saw a few thousand wildebeest, about the same number of Zebra and a load more elephant all grazing on the grassy plain or wallowing in the swap. Then we saw hippo (at least 20), pelicans, cranes, crested heron, fish eagles, superb starlings, marabu stork, wart hog and Egyptian ducks. All within the space of a few hours. By 11:30 we were ready for lunch and walked to the top an old lava cone – called the lookout, where the views were truly spectacular. In the afternoon we went off for a short game drive where we saw a massive elephant (if Carlsberg made elephants….) and then we rushed off to see a cheetah with 4 cubs!!! All in all a brilliant way to finish our safari.
If any of you are planning to come to Kenya I can recommend Doudi and his team for sorting us out with a safari that without doubt has been so much better than any I have done in all the years I have been coming to Kenya. I am happy to pass on his details (and I am not even getting commission)
The picture below is of us on the lookout after or packed lunch (which was also VERY good)

In the spirit of good relations between the team and our drivers, they have agreed to train up Charlie to take over when needed – she’s incredibly confident…………..

Hi Lucy’s Mum,
Lucy has asked me to confirm that she is eating well and enjoying loads of new recipes – which she will share with you when she gets home – the photo below is proof of her amazing appetite…

(Its mazing what can be done with an iphone!)

Emma has obviously been in too much Sun….. There is such an animal as a Honey Badger and apparently it has a bad temper – almost as bad as Richard Walkers when he found I had got the double bed in the room we share – and he was squashed into a little bed – but Emma didn’t feed her camera to a Honey Badger – we have not meet one of those yet! The camera broke due to the high volumes of dust we have encountered – and so has one of our telephoto lens for the school camera – which just goes to prove that nature will overcome technology eventually…. I will be giving Emma some reality pills later to aid her recovery from her over excited imagination……