A couple from London have raised more than £120,000 to fund a new D-class inshore lifeboat which will help the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
The RNLI-911 challenge started a month ago and saw James and Belinda Richardson travel 911 hours in a Porsche 911 to all the lifeboat stations in the UK.
At 9.11 this morning their journey came to an end as they checked in at the final station in Peel.
Hi I'm Chanel, one of the journalists at Meng's radio. Welcome to the latest edition of Meng's radio newscast. James and Belinda Richardson from London. Right now you've taken up a very interesting challenge. Can you tell me about that? Yes we've embarked on a challenge to drive to all 238 live-bed stations within 911 hours and that takes in the whole of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales including Shetland, Orkney's, Isles of Sealy, Isle of Wight, Jersey, Guernsey, Aldenay and the whole of Ireland as well and of course the Isle of Man which is where we've finished here today. Well importantly the Isle of Man because that's where it all started 200 years ago. It's William Hilary lived here and a perfect place to end our final challenge. I know Belinda you said earlier it's a five year it's been five years in the planning. Yeah well we started in 2018 and the idea was just going to do it once, visit to all the life of its sessions, could it be done in 911 hours travelling to all of them and we achieved it. We started that one and finished it in London and given the London traffic and everything we had seven minutes left on the clock at that challenge. This one by comparison was a little bit easier although we had our challenges a lot of the way. The challenges basically are 39 peries and four flights and due to the weather we've had this summer it has been quite trying but as Melinda always says it wouldn't be a challenge if it wasn't a challenge. I know you said it's been challenging but how has it been you know the highs the lows the everything. Yes I think that whilst you're on the challenge you're just focused getting to the next stage and making sure that you're on time as much as possible but things do crop up in the way you know weather for example fog has been quite a problem for us this year particularly with the ferries but it is probably spending on average about 13-14 hours a day in the car driving so from when we get up in the morning 6-6-30 breakfast gone sometimes we don't even make breakfast because it's too early for our B&B to organize that and then get in our accommodation having a bite to eat and then hitting the sack and literally crashing at about 10 o'clock on average ready to get up the next morning. There is a tiredness but I think it is compensated by really really good sleep when our head hits that pillow we're gone so when we wake up in the morning maybe a little bit groggy but as soon as you hit the first station that's it you're back up there because you've meted such wonderful generous and kind people you've come out specially to see you. I mean I think adrenaline is a big factor also you have a lot of tasks to do every day we have a tight time frame completely with ferries to catch check-in times and there's always the unknown that's going to crop up with a road diversion flooding fog these all impact well I think because you have this list of tasks that keeps you going and as Blinda said the minute our heads hit the pillow preferably soft pillows and all the B&B's out there but it's that is when you trush out really for the next day yeah and we also have silly challenges like for example we have three sets of clothing to wear so we have three of our t-shirts some people think we wear these for two and for 42 days one t-shirt no we had three of them and there we work on a wash one wear one dry one basis they have a rotation but sometimes when they get washed the night before they're not dry enough so James is pretty adept at getting the hair dryer in the room and drying off our t-shirts or our undies if necessary so that they're dry enough to wear what's it driven the passion behind the R&LI for you guys the people without a doubt they have fantastic stations fantastic folks amazing locations but it's the people and it's the people that they go and say it could be you or I or someone that we know a relative a friend but one loss of life a one life saved impacts on so many other people you only have to think about the number of people that you know your family your friends your acquaintances your work colleagues how much your loss of life would impact on all of them so when they say that one person's life in actual fact they're saving probably 50 or more I think there's a special person who's in the R&LI it's an amazing organization that they're 95 percent of volunteers and to commit what they do and also I think the other some heroes are their families and loved ones who allow them to do what they do it's very special they're very humbling people they don't brag about what they're doing or only met yesterday somebody who just recently got a medal and it instantly was thanking the rest of the team who was the hell but not what I got it's what we as a team did and that's the most impressive thing it's the best team in the world and it's a privilege to have actually met them and know them yeah it wasn't me to do go to a lifeboat station they're amazing I'm almost done um going around with the car you know lots of people would probably see you as you're driving around going on the theory things like that have you been able to raise more awareness of the R&LI or are people well clued up about it I think that I like to think that we've raised awareness about the R&LI when we drive along particularly in NASA whether we have the hood down and you can hear everything that's around you traffic you know noise and people and the number of people we hear they've read what it says on the side of the car on the front they got all R&LI so they are registering what the car is doing or it's there's something to do the R&LI well yes we like to think that we're raising awareness as much as possible for this amazing organization and doing this interview for example and and thank you Max Radio for doing this just highlighting what they are about we live in London central London and there are four lifeboat stations in central London that all came about because of the Martianess disaster where 57 people lost their lives in the Thames on a party boat and the R&LI saw that there was a gap because there's no one there to rescue them so they set up four stations collectively they are the it's the busiest stretch of the water in the whole of the network as a result and there are an awful lot of mental health issues around the country and these lifeboat crews get involved in that they will go sometimes for people that hopefully that maybe do make it but also to recover people for their families and that has a big impact on the crews as well you know and they are volunteers and some of them very young but they actually haven't you go and find and search for someone's loved one thank you very much the original question splash is actual mobile billboard car the car because post-asite effectively on wheels and the lovely thing is that when we do stop somewhere the station or buy this go people go up the car and start asking questions meeting about it and that made prompt because we have our Instagram account whether to our website they're thinking about it we look on it and learn something so I think definitely it has improved and that's where I think a lot of the extra money has come from just people involving and being grossed in the whole challenge yeah it's partly splashes and orange car can't miss it but then they start to read the detail and they learn something and also a lot of our sponsors didn't know anything about the R&LI at all I mean we've got a lot of Porsche dealerships who sponsored us for the last couple of years they knew nothing about the R&LI but they'd come on board and they found out and they'd be motivated to re-sponsor us together is uh has splash been around with you guys for the five years yes from new in actual fact when we started our first ever challenge I bought it new um I set about making sure that we started our first ever challenge at Heddington Knieckbert station with 911 miles on the clock so I take and delivery a bit in March the dealership hung on to it and I worked out on my spreadsheet where I could take the car to and back and I'd call the mileage worked out so and I'd bring it back to the dealership they would clean it ready for our next outing we then met Pirelli who sponsored our tires every year on the car and they were taking photographs and wanted to do a short story and he looked in the car and he looked at it and said oh you've only done 800 and something miles and I said yes I said because I want to start the 200 900 miles a minute but the number didn't quite sit right with me that he read on the dash and I went back home checked on my spreadsheet and sure enough if I'd carried on I would have been three miles over so I wouldn't have been able to start with 911 but 914 miles well I couldn't have that I denied myself driving it for six months so what I did is we get ended up in a flatbed truck to take the car to our home to start so that we could arrive at Heddington and we drove up and down the road when we got to Heddington half a mile to use up to get it's that 911 miles of our son-in-law in the car with me we drove up and down and we got to the station reversed onto the drive with 911 dot zero miles that's amazing I understand you guys have also done some fundraising uh along um in in the last month um how what was the total that you raised and there's also something special that's uh going to be built soon um well we've been raising the funds for a relief D-class lifeboat um it's the smallest boat but in the fleet that does in excess of 60 percent of the shouts and and we we've recently told it to be called uh number would be D 911 which is only fitting and but we needed the money we needed to raise 110 000 pounds and we've actually raised 127 000 377 pounds so thank you to everybody who's contributed to that over the last six years and we're so proud to be associated with the R&I and particularly there'll be that boat will save lives so everyone who's whether given a pound or a lot more they could have peace of mind that that will have saved someone's life. Do you like to add on this? Yes no I don't think we have a sort of sort that would actually raise its kind of money and bearing in mind the challenge is you know this one is 42 days in total um but from when we leave home to when we get back home 30 set is 7.95 it's in the length of time we're actually on the road the number of days and the other ones have been shorter whales are shorter island shorter because they're smaller countries um so that's been an accumulation and when we finished our first challenge we were slightly disappointed about the money that we've raised it wasn't as much as we anticipated or a hotel um but we made a really lovely loam up in Stromness lifeboat station and he greeted us um quite later on in our position and he said look he said don't worry about the money raise awareness first and the money will follow and every year we've gradually got that little bit more awareness and therefore the money has fallen so this total is in total of that five years yeah it is I mean it's it's been a kind of a little slow bow at burner but we feel that it started to get more traction and obviously that's not necessarily the final total because we know we've got money still coming in and we would like still to feel that they can still donate to the challenge yeah there's a new target it's unknown but we're going for it I think sponsors have become serial sponsors pick up new ones but people have got so involved and when they understand what we're doing it but what we are and I do most importantly it's all volunteers almost so they're only too pleased to contribute again knowing that they will help save lives also going back to the fact that so many sponsors didn't know anything about the R&L I we have now several sponsors who are starting the relationship with the R&L I so really the boat is fantastic but our real lasting legacy is the relationships that we've hopefully helped to foster that will then continue into the future where both the donor and also the underlying positive benefit when it all flourish. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manxeradiene newscast you are obviously someone with exquisite taste may I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manxeradiene podcasts at your favorite podcast provider so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone thank you you [BLANK_AUDIO]
