Edition 56
As a valued supporter, we are pleased to bring you up-to-speed with a weekly round-up of activities from RMA – The Royal Marines Charity and the wider Corps Family.
This week, we introduce you to the new Threads of opportunity, bring you inspiration from as far afield as the Alps, the Himalayas, Romania and Switzerland, together with lots of feedback from some fabulous home-based feats of fundraising. Enjoy!
Thank you so much for your continued support.
The dizzy height of success
Despite having had to leave the Royal Marines with two fractured feet, former RM Recruit Ryan Thomas is now on top of the world thanks to the help of our Employment & Education team and a training grant from RMA – The Royal Marines Charity.
After enduring a long and arduous road, Ryan is now a fully qualified mountain guide and has spent his first season in Nepal accompanying treks to Everest Base Camp and taking tourists around some of the smaller treks in the foothills around Kathmandu.
Ryan, who hails from Manchester, says: “2022 was a very crazy year indeed for me. I couldn’t have ever imagined in my wildest dreams where I would be now. I couldn’t have done it without any of you guys at the RMA Charity. Not just from a funding point of view but just from having access to the large network of support that you made available to me.”
Ryan has certainly been on a roller-coaster ride since joining the Royal Marines in October 2019 to turn his boyhood dream of becoming a Commando into reality. Although, sadly, it was not to be, he’s now established an exciting new ‘dream career’ that is taking him to new heights.
All good things…
Enormous thanks to St Peter’s Preparatory School, Lympstone (Devon) for having so generously supported us as their Charity of the Year, the last fundraising event being a magnificent End-of-Year Ball from which the school generously donated to us £9,000!
And although the school year is now over, two individuals from the wider school team will be taking part in our Commando Training Challenge on the CTCRM infamous ‘Bottom Field’ next week.
RMA – The Royal Marines Charity’s Deputy Chief Executive, Richard Spencer, was invited to address the school as the guest speaker at its Graduation Ceremony and was later thrilled to receive on behalf of the Charity, a cheque in the magnificent sum of £17,200.
We are immensely grateful to everyone at St Peter’s for such wonderful support over the past academic year.
Ultra specials
What hoofing effort from every single one of the following Ultra-magnificent athletes, all of whom have gone the extra mile in many far-flung places to fundraise for RMA – The Royal Marines Charity. Thank you all so much for the amazing support – time to rest up those feet now, at least for a brief while!
WALES
Baz Gray, Jamie Miles and Andy Macfarlane, aka the Green Yeti fundraising team, took on the Snowdon Black Diamond event this past weekend. This is one of the UK’s ultimate ultra trail marathons where, over a period of 24 hours, competitors have to make as many ascents (and descents) of Snowdon as they can.
And the Green Yetis did brilliantly, completing the gruelling challenge an amazing six times! An incredible example of mental resilience and physical stamina. Huge thank you to the guys for another great fundraiser; they are currently sitting at £4,160.03 (inc Gift Aid).
SWITZERLAND
Former RM Band Member Catherine McGregor (pictured left) ran her latest Ultra marathon through Switzerland. Despite suffering from infected blisters on her feet and damaged toenails, she battled through with good cheer, covering the 322km distance in six days, all the way from the German border in the north, to the Italian border in the south, raising £702.30 (inc Gift Aid).
KENT
And the amazing Heather Crawford has now completed the seventh of the dozen Ultras she is planning to run over the course of the year. Each is taking place somewhere that has a special connection to the Royal Marines, honouring a location, landmark or event that is in some way symbolic to the Corps. This time, it was around Deal in Kent, coinciding with the annual Band of HM Royal Marines Memorial Concert.
Heather has now broken the back of her ‘Better by the Dozen’ Challenge and has, to date, raised £1,393.75 (inc Gift Aid). Thank you – what an awesome challenge this is!
ESSEX
Although he had ‘read a lot’ about long-distance running (!), Ben Furber (top left) from Stanford-le-Hope in Essex had never before actually run a long distance race, however decided to have a go at the Essex Way Ultra marathon.
“The Charity is really close to me. I’m a former Recruit from Lympstone, and the Royal Marines and the RMA are still a massive part of me and who I am, and have a massive, massive place in my heart still! Unfortunately, the heat got the better of me. I got to the timed 77km checkpoint too late so they stopped me from running on any further.” We salute his Commando Spirit and are nevertheless so grateful to Ben for raising £460.
PEAK DISTRICT
Despite hours of heavy rain, along with thunder and lightning (“which made it all the more fun”), Zoe Lindahl (top right) completed her 100km Peak District Ultra Challenge and raised a fantastic £1,258.48 (inc Gift Aid) – “it was tough but I managed to get through to the end in fairly respectable time of 22hrs 5mins”.
Joining the Threads
Despite the possibility that its followers might one day become Turbo Threaders (as per this example of Bootneck slang pictured above), we have anyway decided to tie up with the latest social media network Threads.
Threads is a new app, built by the Instagram team, for sharing text updates and joining public conversations that, in just five days had reportedly signed up some 100M followers.
So, you can now follow RMA – The Royal Marines Charity on Threads via the link below.
Taking the heat
In temperatures pushing 38 degrees C and forecast to rise even higher, former serving Royal Marine John Holden has passed the half-way point of his epic 2,400 km ‘Big Blue Danube’ adventure along the River Danube in his double kayak ‘Big Blue’, raising funds for three charities including RMA – The Royal Marines Charity.
Over the past few days, he’s ‘done’ Serbia and gone on to battle hard headwinds, thunderstorms in Romania: he’s capsized (“pretty scary”), kayaked through deep gorges at the mercy of fast-flowing water with “huge cliff faces so intimidating they make you feel so insignificant”, and – as he paddles into each new country – has to seek out often elusive border police to get his passport stamped!
By now, he’s covered well over 1,000 km and passed through the largest lock gate in Europe (“absolutely awesome”) used by the huge ships plying the mighty river. “Pretty scary really, as we were tiny in comparison. We are on track to get to the Black Sea at 2,000km. Funny really, I reached the halfway point with my fundraising almost at the same time as reaching the halfway point of the distance.”
The increasing heat means that a lot of the time John can only paddle in the mornings before it gets too hot. “We have to make up some distance somehow as there is still a long way to go and sometimes the weather is not kind. We are still here though and battling through and every day brings a new experience. Thank you for all your support and donations.”
Sporting spirits
Huge thanks to Hilton Tucker (pictured top right – second left) and three of his friends, all of whom are working towards becoming Royal Marine Recruits, who took part in the recent Midlands Tough Mudder, raising £110 for RMA – The Royal Marines Charity:
to Nathan Mooney and Andy Hallam (bottom right) who recently took part in Ride London and raised over £8.45:
and to Mark Arnold (left) who was disappointed when the Tenby 2023 Tenfoot 5.5km swim he’d been training so hard for – and in anticipation had already raised £606 – was cancelled at the weekend due to adverse weather conditions. He says: “Needless to say absolutely gutted after 12 weeks of training but I would absolutely like to thank everyone single one who has supported me through and pushed me on and for this great cause supporting the Royal Marines Charity and their families when in need.” We understand Mark is considering a virtual alternative.
Taking the heat
On a mission for the future, ensuring that members of the Royal Marines Family are assisted by the most appropriate resource, is one of the key factors highlighted by RMA – The Royal Marines Charity’s Chair of Trustees, Lynn Fordham, in our latest Impact Report.
In looking to the future, our teams need to constantly collaborate in meeting our pledge to offer those in need the very best holistic support available.
To this end, members of our Health & Wellbeing team last week attended the Health Fayre at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth that was attended by multiple other service charities and where they engaged with members of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Army: while, together with Employment & Education, other team members went along to a dedicated seminar to hear about the next phase of digital transformation being undertaken by the charity that will allow us to monitor and deliver greater social impact with the help of more advanced technology.
Hottest tickets in town
Don’t miss out – 80% of the tickets available for the first ever Massed Bands of His Majesty’s Royal Marines’ tour of six UK cities in September have already been sold!
The spectacular concerts will be on the scale only ever before seen at the Massed Bands’ annual sold-out performances at the Mountbatten Festival of Music in London’s Royal Albert Hall.
It’s not too late and there are still seats available – the Massed Bands be playing in Cardiff, Nottingham, Manchester, Leicester, Liverpool and Gateshead.