Sponsored walk

On Saturday the 3rd of March, some of our team will be doing a sponsored walk along the River Soar, from Leicester towards Redhill (around a mile from Long Eaton, near to Nottingham), the confluence with the River Trent and a distance of around 25 miles. The more money we raise, the further we'll walk, and the closer we'll be to our $2000 target to pay for registration to iGEM by the 31st March. We'll be passing through Barrow-upon-Soar and Loughborough (if enough sponsorship has been pledged) so if you're in the area, keep a look out for us. If you donate enough, we may even dress up or do other things on route, so suggest away!

You can donate via paypal on the right, or if you're on the University of Leicester campus, there are now sponsorship forms outside the Biological sciences office in the Adrian building, on the noticeboards. There may be some other forms being put up elsewhere soon.

Text and photography by Luke Thompson -Lab Leader

Sileby lock and Weir, 9 miles from Leicester

The River Wreake joins the navigation near Syston, 6 miles from Leicester

Mountsorrel Lock, 10 miles from Leicester and (possibly) our lunch stop

A reach of the River, near Cossington. 8 miles from Leicester

Barrow -Upon-Soar, 12 miles from Leicester

More photos will be uploaded after the walk



- On the way to Loughborough

On Saturday the 3rd of March, some of our team undertook a sponsored walk along the River Soar, from Leicester to Loughborough - Our first fundraising event. The money we raised helped close the gap to the $2000 target to pay for registration to iGEM by the 31st March with money from the walk still coming in. We passed through Barrow-upon-Soar and Loughborough seeing a greeting locals in the area, and completed a array of different tasks along the way with photos and videos being available shortly

Figure-1
Photography by Anthony Cox - vice project leader
From left to right: Philip, Luke, Nathan, Will

Figure-2
 Photography by Nathan Hanna - web master.
From left to right: Philip, Anthony, Chris, William, Luke 

The sponsored walk was a great success for our first fundraising event, with our current total raised being approximately £650 which is still growing. At the time of the walk we'd raised around £600 so decided we would walk to Loughborough. We eventually set off after a delay caused by our leader Chris being rubbish with buses ending up him having to walk an extra 1.5 miles, at around 9:45 from the Adrian building at the University of Leicester campus. In figure-1 you can see 4 members of the team at the start line whereby we then set off walking down New Walk into town with Chris catching us up at the clock tower. From here, after the regroup, we then headed down Church Gate and then along the A6 until reaching the River Soar. From here we then continued to walk along the underside of Abby park until it had stopped raining enough to take the photo in Figure-2 . You can also see in this wonderful photo our brand new UoLeicester iGEM team T-shirt and logo.

Figure-3
Photography by Nathan Hanna- Web master
In this photo- Anthony Cox

After the photograph we continued to walk along by the river until we reached the lock and weir near the Leicester National Space Center as seen in figure-3. We thought it was time to start one of the many tasks as we were leaving Leicester, this one being for someone to "Go Green" shown in Figure-4. This task was requested by the ladies at the Biological Sciences office for which we thank them for their kind donation. As you can see in figure 5 this was quite messy. The second half of this task was completed later. 

Figure-4
Photography by Anthony Cox- vice project leader
From left to right: Luke, Philip, Chris

Figure-5
Photography by Nathan Hanna- Web master
From left to right: Chris,  Philip. (background) Luke

Part 2

Figure 6
Photography by Luke Thompson - Lab leader
From left to right, Philip, Chris

figure 7
Photography by Nathan Hanna - Web master

Figure 9
photography by Nathan Hanna - web master
Anthony in morph suit

Anthony in the Morph suit, Nathan in his jujitsu Gi

figure 8
photography by Nathan Hanna - web master
Nathan in his Jujitsu Gi

After walking further along the towpath and through Belgrave we decided it was time to start undertaking some of the challenges people had set. Nathan decided to start things off by getting 3 of his challenges started; this point in the walk was especially good for this as there were markers to tell us once a mile had been undertaken. While Nathan and Anthony we're getting changed, Chris and Philip after seeing something shiny in the river decided to do a spot of fishing with a branch of a tree found along the walk, Shown in figure 6 is what we fished out. After donning his Jujitsu Gi and belt, as well as Anthony putting on his Morph suit and Stetson, Nathan started to walk backwards being guided, while singing the portal song 'still alive' for the mile until we reached Birstall, as seen in figure 7,8,9.

There is also a video of the backwards 'still alive' walk, which can be viewed on our Youtube page

Part 3

As we are now busy with Lab work for the project, the majority of other photos will be put onto the Facebook page, for you to see.

On this stretch of the walk, we then came across a few items we thought we would take along for the journey, Be that a metallic painting that Christopher fished out of the river (with a stick) a stick that then was used as a staff and fishing rod, and a golf ball, making the walk that little bit more interesting! (we are also thinking of raffling off the painting, more news on the Facebook page). Anyway, by this point, Luke and William decided our pace was not to their liking and so scouted off ahead to try and find our first stopping point regrouping at Birstall. Here we found a Weir where Christopher's task of carrying someone was undertaken. As Grace was unable to come on the walk, the next lightest member Anthony (who was in his Morphsuit) was elected to be carried across the weir. After this, we walked into Birstall where we found a Co-operative food store where we bought provisions for the next stage of the walk. Video can be seen on our Youtube page

After this stage, we then continued along the river path through Watermead country park, which was surprisingly not as muddy as we expected after rain earlier that week. With Luke and William walking off in the distance. Along this stretch we passed King Lears lake and John Merricks' Lake before crossing the A46 and continuing along the river. As we walked past Syston, Will and Luke started to pull away from the group, and by the time they got near Cossington, they were over a mile ahead, despite frequent rest stops. During this time Nathan did another of his challenges, be that walking a mile in his underwear! Luckily we were covered by some hedgerow and so were able to do the task. Uppon t

More to come soon!

Christopher Morton - Project leader.
With help from Luke Thompson - lab leader.