The 2016 #CoastalConvoy Rally Route

Just two more sleeps… until the 2016 Pink Car Rally, a #CoastalConvoy travelling from Southend-on-Sea to Hunstanton.  I was delighted to have been interviewed this week by NorthNorfolkRadio.  I’m hoping that the interview will find some more Pink Car owners who might like to join the rally.  This is where we will be… and when…

10th & 11th September

The route and where to find us – although we’ll be hard to miss!
Please note, due to the number of miles we will be travelling, all times are approximate, but we will aim to keep everyone informed of our progress via our Pink Car Rally Facebook page & our Twitter accounts @pinkcarrally and @saligray so please ‘follow’ to catch our tweets.

Saturday 10th September – Leg 1

Southend-on-Sea to Lowestoft

9/9.30am       Arrive Southend on Sea – City Beach, Marine Parade, SS1 2EJ (approx. postcode)
10.30am         Depart Southend on the A127/A12
11.45/12noon Arrive Colchester – B&Q carpark, Lightship Way, CO2 8FR
1pm                 Depart Colchester on the A12/A1214
1.45/2pm        Arrive Ipswich – Treehouse Children’s Hospice IP3 8NS
3pm                 Depart Ipswich on the A1214/A12
4.30/4.45pm   Arrive Lowestoft – ASDA Superstore carpark, off Horn Hill, NR33 0PX
5.30pm            End of day 1 of the rally

Overnight stay and Pinkie Dinner in Lowestoft

Sunday 11th September – Leg 2

Great Yarmouth to Hunstanton

9/9.30am         Arrive Great Yarmouth – Tesco Southtown NR31 0DW
10.30am           Depart Great Yarmouth on the A149
11.45/12noon  Arrive Cromer – Tesco Sherinham NR26 8RY
1pm                  Leave Cromer on the A149
2.30/2.45pm   Arrive Hunstanton – Tesco Superstore, Southend Road, PE36 5AR
3.30pm             End of day 2 of the rally

Raising awareness of, and funds for, the Little Princess Trust charity.
Raising funds for ‘real hair’ wigs for children and young adults.
Find us on Facebook  More information can be found on our website

 

 

 

 

 

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#CoastalConvoy East Anglia 10/11th September 2016

A week today, the Pink Car Rally will be in East Anglia raising awareness of, and funds for, the Little Princess Trust. The 9th annual rally will leave Southend-on-Sea at 10.30am on Saturday 10th September and head for Colchester, where the B&Q Store has kindly offered its car-park for a pit-stop. We should arrive around 11.45/12noon and we’ll be there until 1pm, when we’ll be heading off to the Treehouse Hospice in Ipswich, for a private visit. The Little Princess Trust gives ‘real-hair’ wigs to children and young adults who lose their own hair, primarily through chemotherapy, so each year we visit a children’s hospital or hospice, so that poorly children can enjoy our pink cars. Sometimes during these visits we meet children who have received (or are about to receive) wigs from the charity, which is particularly poignant. The rally will leave the hospice at 3pm and head to the Asda Superstore in Lowestoft, another lovely store which is supporting the rally by allowing us to use their car-park to end ‘Day 1’ of the two-day event. We should arrive at around 4.30/4.45pm and we will remain there until approx. 5.30pm when we will head off for a ‘Pinkie Dinner’ before retiring to a local hotel for the night.

Day 2 of this year’s Pink Car Rally will start from Tesco Great Yarmouth, a super-friendly store where the Community Champion, Hayley, has not only made us feel very welcome to start the rally from their car-park, but has also been actively promoting our forthcoming visit! What a star – thank you Hayley! The pink cars will arrive at Tesco between 9am and 9.30am in preparation for a 10.30am start. From Great Yarmouth, the rally will head to Cromer before a pit-stop at Tesco Sheringham from 12noon until 1pm, when they will make their way to Hunstanton – the final destination for the 2016 Pink Car Rally – arriving around 2.30/2.45pm. We are still waiting to see who will accommodate our cars in Hunstanton for our final rally stop, but if you want to see us whilst we are there, we will be posting updates on our Pink Car Rally Facebook page and Twitter account, so do follow us on social media to avoid disappointment. We will also try to advise you of any delays along the way, so please read the ‘Posts by others’ on our Facebook page too. If you see us along the route, please give us a wave, flash your lights and toot your horn! If you manage to take any photos, and you share them on social media, do share them with us too – we would love to see them.

If you’re reading this blog post and you have (or someone you know has) a pink car, it’s not too late to join the rally. Please email pinkcarrally@me.com for more details. You are welcome to join part of the rally, or the whole rally, as long as your car paintwork is 80% pink.

Ways to support the Pink Car Rally:-
To make a donation, please head to our JustGiving Team page and select one of the Team Members to donate to their page.
To help us to find more Pink Cars to join the rally, please share this blog post.
To help us to raise awareness of the Rally & the Little Princess Trust, please like and share our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and RT our Tweets.
If you work (or know anyone who works) in the media, please ask them to cover the Pink Car Rally.

Thank you…
Sali x

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“Kiss-Me-Quick-I’m-On-The-Pink-Car-Rally”

“Kiss Me Quick” will be the 2015 rallying cry, as the Pink Procession heads #Coast2Coast on a #SeasideSpecial:-

Blackpool to Scarborough Fair – 5^th & 6^th September.

Yes my dear readers, we’re off again…. the 8th annual Pink Car Rally will be parading in a pretty pink procession across Britain, on a #SeasideSpecial – #Coast2Coast #Blackpool2ScarboroughFair #SoManyHashtags  #SoMuchExcitement!

The rally raises awareness of, and funds for, the Little Princess Trust charity, which gives ‘real hair’ wigs to children and young adults in the UK and Ireland who lose their hair, primarily through cancer treatment.

Pink Cars will be popping up all over Blackpool on the weekend of the #BigSwitchOn and I have to say that we are already overly excited! I’m wondering whether we will be able to entice any ‘celebrities’ into our cars, for some pink publicity photos? Especially with The Vamps being the headline act on the Friday evening!  I might just start a Facebook campaign to see whether we can persuade them to participate in some pink publicity for a very good cause.

The official start of the 8th Annual Pink Car Rally will be at 10.30am on Saturday 5th September, with the Pinkies starting to gather from 9am in St John’s Square, Blackpool and we’re hoping that lots of people will come to see our pretty pink cars, which will be dressed-up for the occasion!! (As will we!)  Sunglasses may be required (rose-tinted of course) because our shiny cars are dazzlingly bright – rather like the illuminations themselves!

From Blackpool, we will head to Leeds Children’s Hospital, so that the young patients on the oncology ward can see our pink cars, before heading towards York where we will make a ‘final stop’ of the day at Monks Cross Shopping Centre, providing the press and the public with another opportunity to pop along to ‘pap’ the Pinkies!

Day 2 of the rally will see the Pinkies gathering at the Clifton Moor Shopping Park, York (exact car-park to be confirmed – although I doubt anyone could miss us!) from 9.30am for the official start of the rally at 10.30am.  Look out for us on the A64 as we head towards Scarborough, where we will drive past the train station before turning right and heading out of Scarborough, over the Valley Bridge, on the A165 towards Filey.  We should arrive at Scarborough Fair at around 1pm. . We would LOVE to see you there! We’ll be in the car-park…. you really can’t miss us! Well – our cars will be in the car-park! We might have slipped inside to see the fabulous #Wurlitzers and to enjoy some well earned refreshments!

“Are YOU going to Scarborough Fair?”

Click here for the 2015 Route

If you (or any of your friends/family) have a Pink Car and you would like to take part in the rally, please comment below.

If you are unable to come to the rally, but would like to make a donation, here is our JustGivingTeam link

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Making it real….

I spent today in Regent Arcade, Cheltenham, selling Pink Car Rally Charity Calendars. I was in a super location, in between Druckers and Thorntons, with BHS on my left and the exit doors in front of me, offset to the left. I thought I had dressed warmly; long sleeved thermal vest, long sleeved top, pink car rally t.shirt, big pink zip-up hoodie, woolly tights, trousers, socks and comfortable shoes! In fact, I thought I was going to over-heat before I left home! In the event, I was decidedly chilly for a lot of the day, so spent a lot of time ‘bouncing’ on the spot, to keep warm!

But – and I don’t mean this to be as cheesy as it might sound – the thing which brought me most warmth during the day, was the amazing conversations I had with the lovely people who came to say “Hello”, to buy a calendar, or to pop some pennies in the collecting tub. Their stories were incredibly moving and I felt very honoured to have been told some very personal things. I want to share a few of these things with you, without giving away any confidences, so that I can make what we do ‘real’ for you, too.

I will list some of the things that were shared with me, in bullet form – please remember, these comments were made today. Just today. 

• My daughter recently donated her hair to your charity (several people said this)
• I am so pleased to see you – my daughter has just had her hair cut – where should we send it?
• I’ve brought a hair donation with me – please can I give it to you?
• I’m planning to grow/cut my hair and donate it to the charity.
• One of my family members has received one of your wigs (more than one person said this)
• I have just discovered I have cancer (young person)
• I would like to donate. This is my son, he had cancer when he was young. (Gorgeously handsome and extremely healthy looking young man smiles at me)
  
• I have alopecia. (Followed by a very moving discussion)
• I wanted to thank you for what you do – my daughter is wearing one of your wigs.

I’m sure I haven’t remembered ALL of the comments that were made… I didn’t write any down – perhaps I should have, but I certainly didn’t expect to hear so many links to the charity.

Today made me think back to 2007, when I first volunteered to help raise awareness of the charity and, thinking on my feet, suggested that I create a Pink Car Rally. I can remember having many, many conversations…. repeating over and over again, the name of the charity, what it did, where it was based etc., etc., No-one had heard of it, but as always… once people heard about it, they loved it.  In fact, one lady who chatted with me today said much the same thing. She knows Simon & Wendy Tarplee, who founded the charity and she used to regularly suggest that the Little Princess Trust should be the ‘chosen charity’ for her workplace, but no-one would support the suggestion because they hadn’t heard of it! Now they actively support it and love it!

In the six years since I first volunteered to help raise awareness of the charity, I have watched this wonderful organisation grow and flourish.  It now has a small team of very dedicated paid staff, and a team of passionate, loyal volunteers.  It has grown to such an extent, that it has now given over 2000 ‘real hair’ wigs to children who have lost their own hair, mainly through cancer treatment.  

The more well-known the charity becomes, the more families it will be able to help and so today was not just about selling calendars.  There were still plenty of people today who were unaware of the charity and the Pink Car Rally….. but nowhere near as many as there used to be!  

But whereas six years ago, when I started promoting the charity no-one had heard of it before, today was very different. It was wonderful that so many people already new about the charity, but the people who shared their stories with me were the ones who illustrated this fact most… and to those people in particular, I would like to say “Thank you, for making it real, because it’s hearing stories like yours that helps me to realise that the hours I and all of the other volunteers donate to the charity, do have an effect”. I will return to Regent Arcade tomorrow wearing an additional layer of clothing, an even bigger smile on my face and a very warm, fuzzy feeling in my heart. 

PS We raised an amazing £212.93 today – thank you 🙂

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I’m looking for a Pink Car, for the 1st Prize in our Special Pink Raffle – please can you help me to find one?

I’m busy planning the 2014 Pink Car Rally Fundraising Campaign and I have decided that we need a Pink Car, as 1st  prize in our Special Pink Raffle.  Now, I realise it’s a BIG ASK, but my glass is ALWAYS half-full…. so all I have to do now, is to find a company which has a kind heart, values what we are trying to achieve, loves the work of the Little Princess Trust Charity.. and ‘hey presto’ –  decides to present us with a Pink Car to raffle!

Now… let me just turn my hat around and look at it from the other perspective. Being both a volunteer and a business coach enables me to look at a situation from both sides.  The first consideration to any commercial company is the ‘what’s in it for me?’ factor. Sadly, the simple fact that they are helping a charity doesn’t cut the muster! I understand that. I also realise that most commercial companies seem to prefer to donate to the ‘huge’ charities… which of course gives them good press coverage, recognition and appreciation from the public, to name but a few ‘benefits’.  

However, I would argue the case for a small charity, where such a donation could make an incredible impact – the benefits to the donor company could be greater than they could possibly imagine.  For example, I use every possible minute of my spare time to promote the Pink Car Rally, and any business which ‘helps and supports’ us is thanked very publicly.  The best illustration of this is the story of the Pink National Express Coach:-

In 2009 I entered National Express’s ‘Bling My Coach’ competition, whereby people were invited to design a livery for one of their coaches and say where they would take the coach, if they won the competition.  I was one of 5 finalists, whose designs went to public vote.  My design was pink and incorporated the Little Princess Trust Charity’s logo, together with the Pink Car Rally website address. The public voted and soon the two front-runners were Action for Children and the Pink Car Rally and believe me, we were ‘neck and neck’.  It was incredibly stressful!  Now, if you look at the Action for Children website, you can see that even in 2009 their annual report mentioned 12,000+ volunteers and supporters (huge voting potential) and ‘millions of pounds’ raised through fundraising.  The Little Princess Trust, at this time, might just have recruited its first paid staff member!  And the volunteers could probably be counted on 4 hands! Fearsome competition and yet we won! So how on earth did we do it? Sheer determination and the power of social networking! The coach was duly wrapped pink and joined the 2010 Pink Car Rally, carrying pink passengers.  It became part of the main National Express fleet, owned by their franchisee Yeomans Travel, Hereford, and could regularly be seen on the Hereford, Gloucester, Cheltenham, London route and in fact, was only recently ‘unwrapped’.  National Express and Yeomans Travel kindly continued to support the rally for another two years, by entering the pink coach in the 2011 rally and in two legs of The Big One – the 2012 End2End rally.

The coach became a much-photographed, travelling advertisement for both the charity and the rally.  Needless to say, we were incredibly grateful to National Express and thanked them publicly, many times.  In addition, we mentioned the National Express Pink Coach in every press release, during every radio interview, on our Facebook page, on Twitter, on Linked-in, whilst giving our ‘charity talks’, during networking events….. at any and every conceivable opportunity.  In 2011, the Head of Media for National Express told me that their stats showed that we had generated an unsurpassed level of publicity for them.

So…. I’m looking for a Pink Car, for the 1st Prize in our Special Pink Raffle.  Please can you help me to find one?  And if anyone should ask you “what’s in it for us” you will be able to tell them “more than you could possibly imagine.”

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How time flies when you’re busy organising Pink Car Rallies! (or at least that’s my VERY poor excuse!)

It is far too long sine I last Blogged, so my November resolution is to Blog more frequently! And what better way to start than to tell you about our latest fundraising initiative! Last weekend we launched our 1st ever Pink Car Rally Calendar, which can be purchased via our Facebook Page  see ‘Notes 4’ at the top of the page and will also be available to purchase, later this week, via our website. Payment is via paypal and the cost is £7.50 which includes postage and packaging to any UK address. We are happy to sell calendars to our followers all over the world, so if you would like to buy one but you don’t live in the UK, please contact me advising how many copies you would like and where you live and I will let you know the additional postage cost. Thank you. All money raised from the sale of the calendars, once the printing cost has been deducted, will be given to the Little Princess Trust, to help fund ‘real hair’ wigs for children. Thank you for your continued support.

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Land’s End – tired, but happy Pinkies

We made it! We arrived in glorious sunshine too!

We arrived at Land’s End on Sunday 19th August 2012, at the end of our epic six-day journey, where we travelled the length of Britain, raising awareness of (and funds for) the Little Princess Trust charity, which gives ‘real hair’ wigs to children who lose their hair, primarily through cancer treatments. We were exhausted, but exhilarated. New friendships had been formed, old friendships rekindled and, best of all, we had raised a total of £16,067.06 which would fund 45 children’s wigs!

That was supposed to be the FINAL rally; the culmination of a 5-year awareness-raising programme. BUT, for so many reasons (some of which I will share with you in a future Blog) there WILL BE a 2013 Pink Car Rally….. so please ‘save the dates’ – 7th & 8th September 2013. We will be travelling to Nottingham and ‘other destinations’ to be confirmed. Please follow us on Facebook www.facebook.com/pinkcarrally and on Twitter @pinkcarrally and @saligray to ensure you don’t miss any updates. If you know of anyone with a Pink Car, please mention the rally to them. Thank you.

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The SatNav said “Turn right”, so I did!

This was the start of our trek across a mountain pass, which got narrower and steeper until we were driving through dense fog, with no mobile signal. We drove for 26 miles on this track, which delayed our journey by 2 hours! What a start to the rally!

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We did it!!!

Struggling to hold our banner, in the high wind and heavy rain. Yes, it’s mid-August!

Well, we’re nearly at the end of February 2013 and I still haven’t managed to update my Blog! I had such great plans, prior to last year’s epic rally! I had upgraded my Nokia to an iPhone and invested in an iPad, to ensure I could write a daily Blog, updating our followers of our progress. In the event, both failed L or more to the point, I failed! I couldn’t connect to the internet, I locked myself out of Facebook and when I tried to re-connect, I was banned for some ridiculous amount of time, because I was trying to reconnect through equipment I hadn’t connected with before…. I could continue, but suffice to say I had to undergo a steep learning curve, whilst the other delightful Pinkies filled in the gaps for me!

So – huge apologies to everyone for the lack of communication.  Hopefully you all managed to keep abreast of things through Social Media?  Miranda from The Sunny Times http://www.thesunnytimes.co.uk/?s=pink+car+rally was an absolute God-send and made huge efforts to contact us along the way and then report on our progress.  Twitter was awash with sightings, although I don’t think we quite managed to ‘trend’.

The Rally was the most incredible journey – from the moment we left, in heavy rain, gale-force winds and (at the last minute) hail, having discovered that the A9 was closed and having to follow the satnav over the mountainous Highlands, to the moment we arrived in Land’s End, six days later, in glorious sunshine.  There are so many stories to tell – far too many for a Blog – but I have started writing them down and hope to produce them in some form or another, in due course.

I would like to thank everyone who supported the Pink Car Rally and the Special Pink Raffle, for your kindness and your generosity.  Together we raised an incredible £16, 067.06, which will fund 45 children’s wigs.

I will leave you with one story, which could perhaps be better described as a cautionary tale.  Having been diverted off the A9 onto a single-track mountain road with ‘passing places’, I wasn’t too concerned, until my SatNav instructed me to “Turn Right”.  Have you ever had one of those moments when every inch of your body is telling you NOT to do something…. and yet…. I didn’t know the road at all and the SatNav became pretty insistent…. so I obeyed and turned right. Well, the mountain road with ‘passing places’ may have been WITHIN my comfort zone, but I quickly realised that the track I had turned onto, which incidentally had LONG grass growing along the centre of it, was well OUTSIDE my comfort zone, especially as it was no wider than my car, showed no sign of passing places and was heading steeply upwards, into thick fog! However, a glance in my rear-view mirror affirmed that there was a complete convoy of pink vehicles behind me and NO place to turn round. I started to ‘glow’ (well, I am a woman!) when I looked at the unmade road ahead, complete with massive potholes and I wondered just how ‘low’ the suspension of the Pink Porsche was…. and whether the Smart would enjoy climbing the very steep mountain track….. I turned to my 15 year old navigator.

“Lissy” I hissed, “How many miles does the SatNav say we will be on this track for?”

“26”

And with that, the SatNav lost signal.  In fact, all method of communication was lost – there was no mobile phone signal and the fog was so dense that I could really only see the car behind me, and very little in front of me! I knew there was a sheer drop, to my left and there was no precise edge to the track! It was the longest 26 miles I have EVER driven and it delayed us by 2 hours.  I clearly remember arriving for coffee at Dornoch, two hours later than anticipated, and thinking “This is only the beginning of our six-day journey”.

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The Epic Failure – or a typical day in the life of…..

It could only happen to me!  Honestly!  Ask any of my friends and they will tell you the same thing….

So, after the excitement of posting a FAB photo of Olivier Azam in Blossom, last night I attended an event at the ‘hallowed ground’ of Kingsholm – well, sadly I wasn’t actually ON the hallowed ground!  It was a lovely opportunity to network with others and to find out about the 1873 Club.  The new Director of Rugby, Nigel Davies, gave an inspirational address and whilst listening to him, I tried to deduce ‘exactly’ where his accent was from.  It sounded very familiar…. and I decided that he must be from the area where I grew up and so I mentioned this in an email which I sent to my cousin this morning.  To my surprise, not only was I correct, but she and her husband know him!  We do live in a very small world…..

So far, so good!  I now have a photo of Olivier in my car and a possible connection to Nigel himself…. So when I left the house at mid-day, to go to a meeting, I was feeling pretty pleased with the way things were going…..

After the meeting, I popped into a local store to buy some fizzy water (yes honestly! This girl lives a clean life!) and parked Blossom away from the other cars, to avoid ‘paintwork pings’ from inconsiderate drivers (does that happen to you too?).  Pushing my overfull trolley towards my car – or should I say… fighting to keep my overloaded trolley under control – I noticed that a rather large vehicle had parked next to me!  I felt rather frustrated that Blossom’s magnetism had struck once again, until I got closer and any frustration completely evaporated, as I read the words ‘Raging Bull’ on the bodywork. I have lived in Gloucester long enough to know that Raging Bull is Phil Vickery’s (retired Gloucester Rugby legend) company!  I slowly loaded the water into my car – partly because it was sooooo heavy and partly because I wanted to find out who was driving the beast, which Blossom seemed to have taken a liking to!

I returned my trolley (see I AM a good girl!) and when I turned back toward my car, someone was getting into the Raging Bull Mitsubishi.  I casually SPRINTED back to my car, in my high heeled boots and tried to smile calmly as I came face to face with….. the man himself!  I smiled, opened my mouth and gabbled away (eeek) finally saying “So please may I take your photo? It would be great to get both of the cars in too!” He kindly agreed, although I think out of sympathy for this mad-woman, rather than for any other reason – poor guy.

So – it’s all still good at this point!  But I have a problem – my very, very old Nokia phone does take photos, but I have no idea how to transfer them from my camera, to my computer.  In my car, I have my iPad – which I’m still getting to grips with!  But…. I know it has a camera! So, I merrily say “I’ll just get my iPad” and out comes my pretty pink and white spotted underutilised piece of modern technology…. and out came the sun!  I couldn’t see anything on the screen. I didn’t want to delay Phil, so I’m jigging around, trying to cast a shadow over the screen and finally, I can see him! “ 123 smile”, I call, manically!  Hahahaha – “Ok, let’s take one the other way round”, I say, professionally. I’m so pleased.  Two more FAB photos to tweet….. Phil retreats warily and I rush home – I can’t remember when I was last this excited (I know…..) I open the iPad immediately, I can’t wait to tweet these photos….. ummmmm…. where are the photos?  I check, I double check, I triple check – no photos! I don’t understand! I decide to take a photo of something in my kitchen.  123 click – the screen image vanishes and is replaced by the desktop screen! There was no ‘click’, no ‘shutter sound’….  I have learnt two things today…. Firstly, the little round button, on my iPad, doesn’t take photos! It takes me out of the programme I am in.  Secondly, I am a Plonker 😦

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