Sacrifice

Post date: Sep 12, 2015 6:39:3 PM

I sit here, blogging on my boat for the very last time. Tonight will be my last night on this boat, ever. Tomorrow will be my last sail in it, ever. I am selling it.

So I am excused some reflection on the venture past. And my last discovery day on Beachy Head shone the spot light on a theme that presented itself over and over as I went around this country.

There is a memorial stone on Beachy Head in tribute to the 110,000 aircrew of the Royal Airforce Bomber Command. 55,573 gave their lives in the cause of freedom. Beachy Head, for many of them, was the last they ever saw of England.

Every place I visited had some story to tell of their involvement in the 2nd World War. Stories of great bravery and sacrifice. Many of the coastal towns also had stories of the RNLI. In its infancy, men in the RNLI would take huge risks to go out in awful conditions with paltry equipment to save foreigners who’d lost control of their ship. I have read so many stories of people sacrificing all for others. More in the last few months than I have in my entire lifetime.

And it makes you think. If anyone should think that mine was a brave venture; Please, with no false modesty, I can assure you it was not. I’m a family man and I wrapped myself in cotton wool before cavorting around the coast. What inconveniences or stresses I have experienced are but nothing to what I’m alluding to. To be perfectly frank, the times I’ve felt in most danger was when riding along A roads.

Which brings me on to Honeypot. Because they support children who are sacrificing themselves. Children who are sacrificing their childhood, and by implication jeopardising their future, to do good for others. Children need to be children.

I remember at my prep school a teacher used to threaten us with the words “If you can’t behave like adults then I won’t treat you as adults”. And I remember thinking, “But I’m not an adult and I want to be treated as a child”.

So my take home message for this venture is to recognise the enormous sacrifices that people have made and the sacrifices that are still being made. And the children that Honeypot support are making sacrifices, big ones. Please help them: http://www.domsroundbritainsail.uk/charity or http://www.honeypot.org.uk