Saturday 19th January 5am. That's the date and the time of the start of my next adventure. I had a received an email from Nick at Parasport during the week telling me about an event I might like to Know about;
An unusual Guinness World Record attempt was taking place at the Eden Project, St Austell, Cornwall. Wheelchair users from all over the country being invited to establish a world record for the largest ever gathering on ice. This is a record that has never been set before. The record attempt was being coordinated by Leanne Grose to celebrate the launch of her DVD Leanne's Chair Workout - which was filmed at the Eden Project.
So at 5am I got out of bed and started my journey down to Devon. I had borrowed my friends sat nav so that I didn't have to worry about directions and the sat nav told me I had 224 muiles to go. It was dark, raining and 5am!! Not a time you would normally see me up and about. One good thing about driving at 5am is that there is no one else on the roads so I may have pushed the speed limits a little bit!
Arrived at the Eden Project just after 10am which was pretty good going and went down to the ice rink to meet up with people. The Eden Project is wheelchair friendly if you take in to account that's its build on a hill!! So basically you can only really go one way and that's down. Once at the bottom there is a wheelchair friendly train that takes you back to the top again. The car parks are all accessible but I did have to ask for help from a guy to push me up a hill that was just too steep to do on my own (and I did try, I promise). Therefore I would say that The Eden Project is totally accessible for a wheelchair user as long as you have someone with you for the steep parts.

Back to the Wheelchair World Record attempt, the event started at 11am so the areas around the rink started to fill up from 10am onwards. I moved around talking to people and handing out flyers and was really pleased to meet up with a couple of members to our site; Rob Chillcot and his girlfriend Sarah. As 11am approached everyone got on the ice rink and had great fun going round the rink and spinning round in circles on the ice. Afterwards the press took loads of photos and we had a speech by the organisers. People then went off in different directions; some to go and watch the wheelchair dance show by Chuffs and others to where Leanne was doing her book signing. I watched the wheelchair dance show and was very impressed by the co ordination of the dancers and how good it looked to watch.

 

  

That was it then, event over and now for the drive home, another 224 miles ahead of me!! As I got on to M5 the heavens opened up and it pretty much rained the whole way home. So much so that I was concentrating so much on the road that I missed my exit on the motorway and had to divert which added another 30 miles to my trip. Not a happy bunny I was!!! Got home around 6pm so not a bad round trip to Devon and back in just over 12 hours.

Phew I was knackered though!!