A LOCAL hero has pushed the boat out to raise money for charity on the occasion of his 52nd birthday.
Stephen Lamb from Lutterworth arrived tired but triumphant at The Tower of London on Friday (April 19), his 52nd birthday, having completed a lone 120-mile charity paddle down the Grand Union Canal from Leicester.
Steve, the team leader of Leicestershire Search and Rescue for the past six years and a former Royal Marine, always does ‘something different’ to celebrate his birthday, and this year was no exception.
He was welcomed at the Tower by Yeoman of the Guard and fellow Bootneck Andy Merry, having rowed his way to raising almost £9,000 for RMA, The Royal Marines Charity.
Having ‘given his new canoe a good try-out’ and become an expert at ‘learning j-strokes on the hoof’, Steve set off from Foxton Locks and – despite weathering torrential downpours and having to ‘jungle-fix’ his portage wheels several times – kept to his plan of paddling an average 25 miles a day.
He navigating the 166 locks between Leicester and London over the six-day journey, sleeping ‘rough’ alongside the tow path.
He said: “I normally tackle something to do with running to mark my birthdays, but decided to do something a bit different this year, something that’s a bit kinder on the knees!
“But it was still tough. Portaging all the locks wasn’t easy, the two, one-mile tunnels were quite challenging, and I endured a few hardships in being completely self-sufficient along the way – but it’s all part of the Marines’ ethos.
“As a former Royal Marines Commando, it is important to me to give back to the Corps and its wider family. As a young Marine, it gave me so many life skills and values – I’m still grateful for those skills and implement its values on a daily basis.”
Visit https://tinyurl.com/2s4x3n4k to donate to Steve’s fund-raiser.
