Let Me Introduce You To Anthea

The Anthea in question is a most remarkable young lady that it has been my pleasure to exchange e-mails within the last week or so. Her name is Anthea Barteau and during this year which is gently coming to a close, she set herself the tall challenge of covering (including running, hiking etc. etc) a total of 2012 miles for charity, to coincide with the number of the year.

She achieved this incredible feat with half of November and all of December to spare, although there is a little self interest in that decision as it would allow her to have a celebratory glass of champagne at the O2E Charity Ball. She has raised in excess of £3,000 during this year.

O2E (Ordinary 2 Extraordinary) is Anthea's chosen charity, which describes itself with the following mission statement -

To make a difference to the lives of seriously and terminally ill children, whilst encouraging and supporting all ages to embrace sport and adventure, get out of their comfort zones and live life to the full.

Early indications coming out are that the Ball was its usual roaring success, with about £25,000 raised on the night. There are different charities supported every year by O2E, the lucky recipients this year have been Sparkle, GetKidsGoing, EACH and Riverside, which is located in the London Borough of Bromley..

Back to Anthea, because I think that this is a young lady we are going to be featuring a lot in the coming year. When I asked her what were the ups and downs of her year she replied, “ups have been losing nearly a stone in weight and the highs one gets from working out. The lows have been falling behind and then having to try and complete 100 miles in a week which was draining at times”.

What I find amazing is that she is setting herself a new challenge for 2013, and that is to swim 201.3 miles, all the more remarkable as she herself says, “This will be quite a task for me as I am not a swimmer. I am signing myself up for lessons soon”!

Having exchanged a few e-mails with Anthea, I very quickly came to the conclusion that not only is her enthusiasm almost indestructible, but she would also be a wonderful karaoke partner at a party. To that she would probably answer “I'm a hopeless singer, but I'm signing up for lessons shortly!”

We at Brit Breaks intend to feature Anthea and her chosen charity throughout the coming year and I look forward to following her progress.