Frizzell.biz

Thursday 27th May I waved good bye to the two entrepid travellers at 9:30 this am and they calle to say they had arrived at Dover in good time to get their ferry to Dunkerque. they even had time to stop off for a "snack" en route!!! Matt has an enormous breakfast in the picture sent via twitter ! At the time of writing I hope they will not be far from the Destination or at least half way accross? There is a lot of media interest in their work and I am for one very proud of what they are both doing and their radio interviews both in the south and the Midlands are great to hear! Listen in tonight at 6:00 on BBC Radio Sussex and Radio WM tomorrow morning at 7:20 if you miss it try to catch it online on listen again. Lets hope the total keeps on growing to reward the hard work done by all for this event to raise well deserved money for Help for Heroes charity Well Done Andy and Matt

We're packed and just about to depart for Dunkerque. then it's a matter of waiting to get to he start tomorrow morning and then we are off!Cheers!

Well Today the BBC are catching up with Matt to interview him for both the Local Radio and South Today Early evening news programme to be aired tonight at 6:30 Watch it and lets hope they give it some well deserved airtime to help raise money for this worthy cause! Great, sweating over a hot computer key board certainly pays off Good Luck Matt Also I understand the PR team in Birmingham are working hard too and managed to get Andy an interview with the Birmingham Mail Well done any publicity is good publicity! Good Luck Andy

The news that with 18 days to go, Norfolk line ferries will be transporting military vehicles, war veterans and us to Dunkerque so there should be a real atmosphere on the crossing. I'm sort of getting nervous about things now. Have we got everything sorted, etc, etc! I'm sure we'll be fine but...

One of our local newspapers, the Bromsgrove Standard will be featuring our walk in the next few weeks (possibly Friday this week) They are sending a photographer round tomorrow (Wednesday) :)

With a little under two months to go we are half way to our target of £1000 for Help for Heroes thanks to the generosity of our family and friends. With a little more help we should be able to break through our target. It's not too late to make a donation and everyone will get a thumbs up smiley in our heroes who've helped module.

With less than two months to go we have raised one third of the money towards our target of £1000. Thanks to everyone who've contributed so far.

:) I booked our ferries this morning so it's all go go go! We will be travelling in some kind of style too as we are borrowing Barbara's little MX5, fingers crossed the weather is fine and we can go with the roof down :D I've also made enquiries at our first choice hotel in the hope that we can get in there as it is far more convenient for us than the more centrally located IBIS. (We can cancel that right up to the day we arrive without penalty) Well, it's just under 84 days to go and things are moving on a pace. Watch this space. ;)

We are saddened to announce that my mother, Matt's Grand mother passed away on 2nd January 2010 She was 85.

She married my father in September 1946 shortly after his demobilisation from the Army. They lived Briefly in Burcot Worcestershire before setting up home in Rubery near Birmingham in North East Worcestershire. 

They had three children two Grand Children and now two Great Grand Children.

Sorry for this late posting but we had a technical issue on the website which has only just been fixed.

We've added a scrolling information bar that will keep you posted on our progress throughout the day of our walk. This infobar is linked to twitter.com which makes it quicker and easier for us to post news to this site via our phones. The infobar will show the last post made only. If you want to recap you will need to go to our twitter feed which will show all the 'tweets' posted. to view this is a simple process, go to www.twitter.com/40000steps and if you have an account on Twitter you can join us as a follower and post messages to us too.

Thanks to Cotswold Outdoors, Solihull for assistance in the purchase of some new walking shoes giving me plenty of 'breaking in' time ahead of our walk.

Not only have Gill and Mum made a generous donation to H4H via our just giving page but they have also contributed towards our costs for the walk. This donation will be put into the fund for our accommodation and travel expenses for the event. Once again Thank you very much.

Well done you for doing a "dummy" run ! hope your feet recover soon. I can only hope your stamina increases and your feet won't be so sore next time! Matt being younger will probably be able to keep up with you but you never know he may need to practice too!!! Best of Luck Rosemary

Foolishly, after doodling with practice routes on Googleâ„¢ maps I ended up doing a full 18+ miles (30Km approx) walk around the area where I live. Maybe I should have built up to it but once I'd printed the map I was kinda committed. I did build in a couple of 'bail out' points as it was a circular route, one of which was at around halfway on a major bus route home. I did hesitate here as my feet were now getting a little sore but I had an inner feeling that If I cut it short I'd be like a bear with a sore head when I got home. Mind you, I think a sore head is more preferable to how I feel at the moment! From my hips right down to the tips of my longest toes I am sore. You name it, it is sore. Anyway, at least I now know I can do it round the Worcestershire countryside. Northern France is flatter and therefore should be easier. We shall see.

Google Latitude? What's that I here you ask. Well in a nutshell, wherever my phone is, Google latitude knows where it is. So this is good for security if it gets lost or stolen but also selected friends can see exactly where I am (or at least where my phone is). This will kind of provide us with a 'judge of fact' of our walk and for those remaining at home so they can 'experience' our walk too. For obvious reasons this will only be available to trusted friends and relatives only. If you think you are one of those then let me know and I'll see if I can add you to the list of official trackers.

After drawing blanks with two hotels in the vicinity of the end of our walk. I got worried that we might end up 'roughing it' on the beach. While I'm not against that principle - after all my dad spent several days doing just that in 1940, I thought we should be best prepared for our walk as our principle aim is to raise funds for Help for Heroes and to have a feel for the march my dad and Matt's Grandad made. The fact that he 'roughed it' is immaterial to the end product. Consequentially, I have made a reservation at the Ibis in central Dunkerque. This could be useful in as much that we can probably get a bus more easily to Oost Cappel and only need to get a cab between the end of our walk and the hotel at the end of our commemorations. More important is the fact that I know we have somewhere to crash afterwards. That's a weight off my mind.

Well, Barbara, the dogs and me are back from our late summer holiday and once again we got lucky with the weather. Much as I enjoyed the break, Dorset is not as good as Cornwall for me although the beer is on a par :-) It takes a lot for me to choose British Lager over real ale! Apologies to those who have emailed us and not received a reply but I returned from holiday to a huge pile of emails, post and junk mail on the mat. I will reply to you ASAP. The great thing about coming home from holiday is being able to watch my team Bromsgrove - despite the best efforts of the M5 Motorway roadworks at Bristol - win a hard fought match against Ampthill to get a full 5 points to put them sixth in the league. And some decent beers in the club too!! Speak soon.

Well Barbara, myself and the dogs are on our holidays relaxing and walking. The shingle beaches in Dorset are good training for our impending walk. Weather is good for the time of year too.

I've calmed down a bit today. The disappointment of not being able use what I thought was a nice design for our fundraising has now susided and I'm more positive with the new designs. Watch this space for the new Tee Shirt and poster designs and I've replaced the offending images and replaced them with the Union Flag in the banner above.

Having "Done the right thing" and submitted designs for this website Tee Shirts and posters to H4H I have been told that I am not allowed to use certain logos in our fundraising for them. (??) As a result I have to change our campaign posters etc. If you have downloaded our poster then please don't print it. We will be replacing it shortly along with our Tee Shirt design. Corporate Bull. What's the difference? We're raising money for them!!!