My wish list is as follows:

• offer me my own easy-to-personalise site
• allow my supporters to sponsor me
• allow my supporters to follow my process, ideally receiving updates on key milestones achieved
• allow a group of fundraisers to raise money on the same page
• allow my fellow fundraisers to link their pages to mine or have a summary page for all fundraisers on the same challenge, regardless of the charities they are raising funds for
• allow me, my fellow fundraisers and my supporters to share details of the site through sharing buttons linking to Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other social sites
• take payment in any currency
• support gift aid
• allow me to raise money for more than one charity from the same fundraising page
• allow me to post updates to social sites.

I already knew about justgiving.com, virginmoneygiving.com and I knew that other charities have their own online giving sites but I was surprised how few workable online fundraising options there actually are:

• bmycharity
• globalgiving
• justgiving
• mycharity page
• mygift
• mybiggive
• virginmoneygiving
• mydonate

So, over the next few posts I’m going to be looking at the various options and selecting the best option.

La Chemin de la Liberté it is! And for those of you who don’t know anything about it (and I certainly didn’t when I started my research), the route is one of the many taken by hundreds and hundreds of people, both military and civilian, during the Second World War, to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe over the southern Pyrenees into Spain. It’s now an officially way-marked route and considered to be one of the hardest – well, when you have to walk 45 miles with a total altitude gain and loss of over 6000 metres it’s going to need some training, particularly if you’re carrying a large bag with you at the same time .

The Royal British Legion do this route as a fundraising challenge every year but as we are looking to raise funds for more than one charity we’re going to have to work it out ourself. Although the guide who leads the British Legion event every year, Scott Goodall, has written a book that will hopefully give us a good start – The Freedom Trail.

We started to look for organisations or guides that can help us but they seem quite rare. There’s Chez Arran and Gite de la Borde,  but a few attempts at getting in touch have not achieved a great deal so we’ll see what happens.

Having identified our charities and our challenge, my next step is to work out which of the online fundraising sites is going to work best……I was going to do that before the challenge was decided upon but a girl’s allowed to change her mind.

So, what’s the challenge? Well since I cycled from London to Paris about 5 years ago for Action Medical Research I’ve always wanted to do another charity event and having started working as a project manager in a digital marketing agency a few weeks ago, I thought a great way to get into the detail of digital marketing and social media would be to create my own strategy and see how much I can raise through online media – trying out a variety of different tools – including blogging of course!

So here’s my first blog on the subject. Whether we (Andy and I) choose to trek, to cycle or do something else is yet to be decided, however, one thing we have decided is that we will be supporting a number of charities. It’s looking like those charities will include the RNLI and Help for Heroes, and then also perhaps Access Sport. So we have made a start and next it’ll be a task to find which online fundraising websites support people raising money for more than one charity. But that’s for tomorrow…or perhaps later in the week.

After another 5k run in the morning I ventured into Brighton for lunch at La Tasca. The last time I went to a branch of La Tasca was at least 5 years ago in Bluewater but as it was a colleague’s pre-wedding lunch and there was an enthusiastic 15 lunch-goers, tapas was definitely one of the easier options for a group on a schedule.

Paella, calamari, fish, albondigas, a little too little bread, salad and a couple of other dishes arrived at our table only to have disappeared moments later, devoured by a hungry group of e-learning aficionados.

The verdict? Well, although at the time we thought we were still hungry, there was actually exactly the right amount of food for us all. But if you order in advance like we did, do be careful that you get everything you were expecting. We missed out on a few plates of bread and a couple of other dishes but didn’t realise until it was too late. On the dessert front, honestly, I wouldn’t bother with the churros – they weren’t worth the money. Over fried and too greasy. Instead I would recommend popping down the road to Terre A Terre where the rain cherry vodka chocolate churros (or something along those lines) are amazing for a not dissimilar price.

There’s nothing quite like shopping for helping to digest a meal so off to Churchill Square to find a dress for the Italian wedding we will be attending in two weeks’ time. One dress, one hat and some accessories later (and this did not take any longer than an hour you’ll be impressed to know), we headed to The Montpellier for a well earned refreshment break before heading home to show off my spoils.

A good day had in the sunshine. Tomorrow there is supposed to be rain so tidying and charity-shop-dropping is on the cards.

Armed with my rewards I went back to the flat, out of the already baking sun, for a taste of France; coffee, croissants and the news.

In classic “us” style, we left getting ready to go to volleyball to the last minute but we finally left, along with our new baby – our new Mikasa beach volleyball.

Worthing sand courts are just past the swimming pool as you drive into Worthing, opposite Beach House Park. Funded by Volleyball England, the courts are managed by Coast Cafe and cost just £15 per hour for the two courts. A bargain for us Brits used to £20 per hour for one court, but still shockingly expensive for those other nations used to having beach volleyball courts freely available. I think it’s fair to say we are definitely still catching up. The courts are great, not nearly as busy as Yellowave or the Pump Room in Brighton and are sheltered from the wind to a degree by a large wall that sits behind them separating the courts from the park gardens. If you’re not equipped enough to turn up with 5 balls like we did (overcompensation for only having had one ball between 8 of us the last time), the cafe also has balls that can be hired sling with the courts. And if you fancy lessons then Those exist too.

The problem with beach volleyball, the way we play at least, is that one hour is never, ever enough, but two hours is often a step too far. So we played increasingly “interesting” volleyball for almost 3 hours before the draw of the cool sea became too much and we went off for a swim.

Now, I’d hardly spent any time in Worthing but we realised today that from Worthing beach you have an amazing view of the coast. It was really quite lovely and the beach was so much more pleasant than Brighton on a tourist-filled sunny day. Maybe that’s the answer…..when the tourists come to Brighton, we should all go to Worthing.

So having played and swum, we headed back to Brighton, armed with a keen appetite for fish & chips. We walked over to Blatchington Road and got ourselves a large chips, one medium cod, one small cod, a pea fritter and mushy peas for £10 exactly which, given how tasty it was, I considered to be good value compared to a large number of poor fish & chip meals I’ve had in the past. Ramsbottom’s Fish & Chip shop on Blatchington Road in Hove can be recommended.

All of this followed by the UK National Athletics championships made for an excellent Sunday.

And so my first week of no work begins.

So what are my plans for these 5 weeks? Anyone who knows me will know that I must have a plan. For everything. No matter what. So, whilst there is a hint of a plan at the moment, by Tuesday, there will well-and-truly be a plan in place. Even if I choose to ignore it most of the time.

I am spending the middle week with my boy in Sorrento on a much needed holiday. And for the rest? Well, there’s a decent amount of decluttering required, a considerable sprinkling of health and fitness activities and a lot of finding new things to do – preferably with a low or zero £ rating.

One of those new things is to write a blog and stick to it – under the auspices this time of writing about something interesting I’ve done every day for 37 days.

Today was a good start. An introductory stand up paddle board (SUP) session with former British Champion, Jock Patterson of Tribal Wave – http://www.tribalwave.org. We met at Hove lagoon and, on what was turning out to be a gloriously sunny day, we all suited up, grabbed a paddle and watched Tony, Jock’s teaching assistant show us how to self-rescue when out at sea (get as low as you can and paddle like mad), paddle in a kneeling position and then move to standing. Having mastered (ahem…..perhaps) that bit we were then shown how to turn, by paddling in reverse, by stepping back, surfer style, trying not to fall off and then paddling like crazy to get round and then the “easier one” where you turn your body, reverse the paddle in the water and, IF you get it right, almost turn on the spot. Like anything, once you’ve fallen in once your fear goes and you go from strength to strength – we were certainly covering the water much more impressively than the poor windsurfing tutees who were suffering somewhat from a lack of useful wind.

Quite a liberating feeling powering across the water and, for the more physical among you, incredibly satisfying, although I’m under no disillusions that it won’t be a lot harder in the sea compared to the Lagoon. Nevertheless, I’m ever so pleased to have found a water sport that I actually enjoy and that feels like I’m doing a bit of a killer workout whilst simultaneously relaxing – an interesting dichotomy I realise but it works I promise. If you want a core workout but don’t fancy Yoga, Pilates or hundreds of sit ups, SUP is definitely worth a try.

Jock, Ruby and Tony were brilliant – really supportive and encouraging and I can’t wait to get out on the sea in their paddle evenings – they post everything on their Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribal-Wave-SUP. I also can’t wait to see the photos taken on the day .

So two highly recommended hours of paddling and it was back home for lunch, a siesta and then out to Pizza Hut for a two-for-one pizza deal before seeing Captain America in the cinema.  All in all a wonderful day and a fantastic start to my Gardening Leave. Roll on tomorrow.