The End

The results are in, the lines are closed and Bens by Boat 2009 will now gracefully retire.

Since its inception in early August the project has been an occupation in its own right; fun, drudgery, worthwhile, fruitless and a learning curve several times around. It's kept us busy, had us wishing we'd never started but turned out to be ultimately satisfying.
We hope you've enjoyed keeping up with us on the blog and we're glad to have it as a ready-made journal to look back on.

As for the fundraising side of things, good news. Between the justgiving.com site and on the clipboard, we've managed to raise

£1041.04

which we're quite proud of and the RNLI are immensely grateful for.


Now it may have seemed that this has just been two chaps and canoe but that's some way off the mark! Loads of people have helped us along the way and we'll try not to forget anyone.

Thanks to:

• People who donated and made the charity side of things a success
• People who followed us on the blog - nice to look at the hit counter and see people are interested
• People on Song of the Paddle who were awfully nice about us while we were away
• People who came along to the talks and seemed genuinely interested
• Whale Pumps for the pumps
• Mike Poulter of 1st Acton & Waldingfield Scout Group for lending us a canoe
• John Marsh for lending us a car that did 50mpg with a canoe on the roof
• Keith from Elgin who tracked us down along a 5 mile stretch of coastline just in case we needed a lift
• The lock keeper at Inverness who gave us the key that saved us a rubbish portage and got us a hot shower
• Lossiemouth Harbourmaster for keeping an eye on the boat and salty-sea-dog esque weather advice
• Acton Primary School for letting us use their hall for the talks
• Pete Black for technical support, printing and weather info while we were away
• Julie 'the Third Paddler' Black for just about everything - cake, photography, publicity, enthusiasm, networking, lifts, ballast, picnics, ideas, inspiration and generally making sure things got done. Without Julie, things would have been far less interesting.
  

That's all, folks.