walking to raise awareness and money for angelman syndrome
It’s official and now in the open. Le has resigned from her job so we can go travelling for several months! But our bigger news is that we are planning to also embark on the Camino Walk.
To some of our fellow blogger followers who have walked the Camino or are walking the Camino or planning to walk the Camino, you probably already know this news. But what we are revealing for the first time is that we are walking it for charity amongst a few other personal and spiritual (non-religious) reasons!
The walk starts in St Jean Pied de Port in the Pyrenees in France and will end 800 km “down the road” in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Yes, you read it right, we are walking 800 km – it will be over 7 or so weeks.
The Way of St James has only recently been on our radar to do. It began in 2008, when we first heard someone was doing it. It sounded intriguing and sounded like it would be an astounding achievement. Then not long after, we heard of another person doing it and it just sounded too daunting. A few years on, David read “The Pilgrimage” by Paulo Coelho which sparked our interest and before you know it, everyone around us seems to have done it. So last year, we made a pact that we would do this pilgrimage before we turned 40 at it is also on the UNESCO Heritage List. You all know how much we love our UNESCO Heritage List 🙂
After a few highs and lows of the past year, it dawned on us – we needed to do it soon…. So we decided that we would do it in September!
Now to share with you about the charity we have chosen to walk for:
Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics (FAST) Australia
Why these guys?
David’s oldest brother has Angelman Syndrome. And we want to raise not only money for research but also raise awareness about the condition. It really is as simple as that!
So all we ask of our readers and followers is to read up about Angelman Syndrome at the FAST Website: http://www.cureangelman.org.au/ and then do ONE of the following (of course more if you like):
- Share what you have learnt with someone, have a conversation about it,
- Share something about Angelman Syndrome on your social media,
- Share our fundraising page (https://give.everydayhero.com/au/wise-monkeys-abroad) amongst your family and friends
- Support us on the 800 km walk by donating – proceeds go directly to FAST (except for transaction fees taken by the banks),
- Reblog this post or share on your various social media to spread the word of what we are doing, OR
- Encourage us through your comments on our blog, Twitter and/or Facebook as we prepare and face the 800 km.
Thank you in advance for you helping us spread the word and raising money for Angelman Syndrome!
More posts to follow about the Camino itself.
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weekend walks: cape banks circuit
Don’t let the blue skies and sunshine fool you. The temperatures had dropped and there were very high winds for our walk. There were certainly high swells when looking out at sea.
The Cape Banks Circuit was a really pleasant walk that covered about 7.3km. We started at Congwong Beach before stumbling accidentally onto a nudist beach. As you can imagine, we were a little overdressed (excuse the pun).
When we managed to get back on the right track, we worked out way to Henry Head, through dead forests and dense bushlands. Once we arrived at Henry Head what we saw was gorgeous coastline and a WWII battery and fort.
From Henry Head, we walked along the coast and cliff where it was all unfenced. With winds as strong as they were, we stayed well on the track towards Cape Banks Bridge.
This last photo is us leaving Cape Banks behind. As always, our walk was not dull 🙂
Walking back to where our car was parked, there was a snake presentation on. It was extremely educational and we really wished we had heard this talk before we encountered snakes on our walk at Manly Dam
The start of this walk is in La Perouse which is approximately 14 km south-east of Sydney.
Hope you enjoy our photos and have a great week ahead.
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weekly photo challenge: spring
Winter is well on it’s way here in Australia so instead of sharing a photo of the season of Spring. We are taking a different slant on the Daily Post theme.
We are sharing a photo of a geothermal spring from Yellowstone National Park. This photo conjures up the sense of warmth for us as winter is coming 🙂
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should wi-fi be free?
Apologies in advance for this wi-fi rant that we are about to unleash. We don’t like complaining or whinging but there was a moment of weakness when this was written and so we thought we best post it anyway 🙂
After only recently returning from a trip to Singapore and a trip to Melbourne, we are reminded of one noticeably different aspect between hotels overseas and hotels within Australia. We simply can’t help but compare….
Free wi-fi connectivity seems to be a rarity in hotels within Australia – to find one is like finding a gold mine. We experience these issues with connecting no matter where in Australia we are. But worse yet, the charges for wi-fi are astronomical if one is to pay. The recent price we saw was $40 AUD for a maximum 1GB download over 3 days – how utterly unreasonable.
And when there is complimentary wi-fi, there are all these restrictions such as half an hour access, available only in the lobby, up to 500MB download per day.
We think back to our hotel in Singapore, we not only got a smart phone with unlimited internet access but we also had complimentary in-room wi-fi. So maybe it was a recent experience that is making us feel a little precious about free wi-fi?
Nope, that’s not it, because we have travelled to developing countries where free wi-fi is much more accessible and readily available in hotels than it is in Australia.
Anyway, we just wish Australian hotels have the heart and offer free (or at least reasonably priced) wi-fi, help keep us connected with our loved ones and our blogging community without costing us an arm and leg.
Maybe you disagree and think wi-fi shouldn’t be free – would love to hear your thoughts.
wise monkeys abroad 