How arrogant is it for us to thing that we should be able to write to companies and ask them to give us money so that we can ride to Russia and back? It’s not like it’s a particularly special journey – it’s out of the ordinary certainly – it’s not something very many people do – but it’s not really HUGE.

Essentially we’re getting quite a lot of coverage – in fact in the last few days we’ve secured a series of articles on the BBC. Which it has to be said is pretty cool – we’ve also go other stuff which is coming up, so from a sponsors point of view there’s a lot of readers or viewers that would see their brand. I guess what I’m getting at is that there’s something in it for everyone.

Our major sponsor – trustedplaces.com – have been amazing, they really have, and as we move forward over the next year we hope they’ll see a real return for the trust they’ve placed in us. But the interesting thing is how many people have sent us essentially the same letter… it goes something like this.

“Thank you very much for your letter concerning Journey To Russia we regret to inform you that we wont be able to help you with your trip.

As you can imagine we get many requests for help each year and we have decided that we are concentrating on just one charity this year.

We do a lot of charity work… etc etc etc…”

But then we got a letter from Blacks that appeared to be from an actual person rather than automatically generated (some of which were not even signed), that was a nice enough change that it made us feel quite good – but on top of that they also sent us three 10% off vouchers – a really nice touch as we genuinly felt that when they wished us luck for our trip that they meant it.

So as a thank you to Blacks we’re going to add a little advert to our site and buy as much of our kit as we can from their stores – and you should do the same!