London Museum Dash for Sport Relief

Team Honk relay - London. Copyright Gretta Schifano

Team Honk relay, London, 2014. Copyright Gretta Schifano

Do you remember when I danced at Wembley for six hours straight, wearing a fluorescent tutu? And the day when I scootered across London wearing a red onesie? I’m actually quite self-conscious, and don’t really like drawing attention to myself (honest!), but I’ve been proud to take part in these Team Honk charity fundraising challenges.

Team Honk was set up by bloggers Penny Alexander, Annie Spratt and Tanya Barrow to raise money for Comic Relief and Sport Relief. Sport Relief gives half of the money it raises to good causes in the UK, and half to people in need overseas. Over the years, Team Honk has rallied bloggers, writers and others to take part in a variety of weird and wonderful fundraising challenges, raising more than £31,000 for good causes in the process.

London Museum Dash

This year Team Honk members are organising various separate challenges, including a day-long London Museum Dash. The lovely Nell Heshram, who blogs at The Pigeon Pair & Me, dreamt up the London Museum Dash, and it sounds like quite a challenge.

Nell explains what’s involved: ‘There are over 300 museums and art galleries in London, and I want to try and visit as many of them as possible in one day. I won’t be stopping to marvel at the art though – it’ll just be a quick dash inside, a snap of an exhibit, and then on to the next place. I’ve put together a route that starts at the Barbican at 9am, then on to the Museum of London, the House of Illustration at Kings Cross, and then on through Kensington, Trafalgar Square and the South Bank.

National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London

We’re hoping to be able to visit some galleries that are a bit out of town too, although we’ll have to see how our timings are going on the day, of course! We’ll be jogging some of the route (lots of the museums are close to each other), and travelling by public transport to cross the capital. Our final stopping place will be the BFI on the South Bank, where supporters are very welcome to come and join us for a celebratory cocktail!’

Joining Nell for the challenge are Team Honk co-founder Penny Alexander, who blogs at parentshaped, and radio presenter Swazi Rodgers, who blogs at Chocolate is not the only fruit. Nell says that her work as the BritMums arts and culture editor was the inspiration for the London Museum Dash: ‘I was putting together my monthly arts and culture round-up for BritMums. It usually includes a lot of posts about museums, a lot of which I haven’t been to. There are just so many! We’re especially lucky in London, where a lot of places are free and very family-friendly. So I just thought, why not make my challenge an attempt to visit as many as possible, in one day?’

Nell, Penny and Swazi are covering quite a distance for this challenge. Nell says: ‘The dash will be hard work, physically. Although we’ll be able to take a break on public transport, there will be at least 10k of walking/running. Much more if we visit all the places on our hit list! So I’ve been out most evenings, trying to do a jog to keep my fitness levels up. And I’ve been joining my son on his junior park runs!’

I ask Nell how she’s feeling about the event. She says: ‘I’m a little nervous. With travel around London, you can never tell how it’s going to go. Sometimes you whizz from A to B in 5 minutes, but at other times you get stuck in a tunnel for half an hour. But at the same time it’s incredibly exciting. This is a new challenge, and I’m really looking forward to striding out into a wild and wonderful day of cultural delights!’

I’m sorry that I can’t join Nell, Swazi and Penny for this challenge, as I’ll be on my way to France as they dash between London’s museums and galleries. I’m sure that the London Museum Dash will be a great success, and I’m supporting them by writing this post.

Sponsor Team Honk

Nell’s aiming to raise £1,000 in sponsorship from the London Museum Dash. If you’d like to sponsor her as a member of Team Honk, you can do so via her Sport Relief giving page.

Once you’ve sponsored Nell, Penny or Swazi, you can sign up for the London Museum Dash sweepstake and try to guess how many museums and art galleries they’ll manage to visit during the challenge. The person who guesses the correct number of museums and art galleries – or who comes closest to the total – wins a prize!