Great day today, as we set off to Highworth near Swindon to pick our ambulance up.  Named ‘Sheila’ by our first £100 donator to Breakthrough Breast Cancer, she’s a beautiful Renault Master 7 seat patient transport vehicle with a wheelchair lift – perfect to be put into long and active service in places of real need by charities in Mongolia, and so well looked after that she’s in need of very little work to prepare her for her epic journey ahead.

Sheila has been donated to us by Reliance Care Services of Bristol who provide cost effective, total transport solutions as required by NHS Trusts, Local Authorities and Probation Areas for their patients, residents and offenders.  Their strategic priority is to assist these partners in providing an efficient and effective care and treatment service.   We can only offer our enormous and heartfelt thanks for their astonishing generosity, and in particular  their operations deparment’s Paul Wood and John Traas who’ve been magnificent in their help in sorting everything out.  It was great to meet you guys (and Paul’s dad!), and we were hugely touched by your enthusiasm for what we’re doing.  We won’t let you down.

Ben signs up as official Sheila owner!

Ourselves, John and Paul from Reliance in front of Sheila.

Sheila on her first journey as the Mongolia Five steed!

Click to read the article

I’ve mentioned before about how I’ve had a very rewarding 13 years working for the Manchester Mental Health & Social Care Trust, and after our Chief Executive gave us a nice quote to use in our fundraising, the communications department of the trust were kind enough to feature Mongolia Five in “Staff News”; the monthly newsletter for all staff within the trust.  Considering that the Trust employs hundreds of people over many different hospitals, specialist accomodation units and offices this is most definitely welcome exposure for what we’re doing.

Many thanks to Advita and the team for helping us out!

It’s with a lot of smiles all round that we can announce the arrival of Kieron’s daughter, Rebekah Joy who made her way into the world at 7 minutes past midnight last Wednesday weighing in at a very health 6lb 13.  Rebekah is Kieron and Kate’s first child, and looking as incredibly cute as she does (and considerably less tubby and hairy than her father) we can only assume that she’s been lucky enough to get her mum’s genes!  Mum and baby are both doing great.  I asked Kieron how he’d found the first few days of fatherhood, and he replied “I’ll tell you when I can tear myself away from looking at her…”

It’s one of the cool things we realised just after we had our first meet up in March was that Mongolia Five have 2 babies on the way before the rally starts in July next year.  Ben and his wife Leonie are due to have their arrival (another first baby) at the end of November.  The rest of the team are trying to work out how all that nappy changing practice will come in handy when we’re out there.  The sleepless nights certainly will.

One of the things that we’ve been meaning to do for a while now is get a group bank account sorted to pay sponsorship money into – by which we mean cash that we’re raising from businesses to put towards the cost of the rally; this is completely separate from our fundraising for Breakthrough via our Justgiving page where every penny goes to our chosen charity.  Really, we weren’t expecting to be needing to have to get round to this until we had our vehicle (about which more news later this month), and therefore something to sell in the form advertising space on it.  But, news travels fast and we’ve been lucky enough to have seen a pretty amazing amount of interest already from companies who can see the potential in associating with what we’re doing.  It’s been great, and we’re very thankful!  We like to think we offer a great deal in return, and you can check all that malarkey out by clicking here.  So, Matt made the appointment, and off 3 of M5 went to see Peter at HSBC Liverpool, a mere half an-hour later chatting about what we’re up to with Peter and signing bits of paper and out we walk with our new shiny comunity account.

The fact that there was an all-you-can-eat buffet not half a mile from the bank was not lost on us, so off we went for a bite to eat, laugh at Matt trying to get used to his new contact lenses, and to take a few piccies.  Who thought banking could be fun?

We’ve only officially been live as a website for a few days and already the amount of support we have had from friends, family and complete strangers has been amazing. I know we have several months yet before the rally, but every penny counts. We’re doing this for an amazing cause. Your support means so much to us. Thanks guys!