Rob Evershed, Geophysics Project Officer
Normally I’m either found sitting at my desk, analysing geophysical surveys, or out in a field walking around with a machine that goes beep (a lot) whilst the magical pixies within it draw a picture of what’s under the ground. Recently there’s been a very large amount of walking whilst conducting a geophysical survey of a proposed cable location. I’ve probably been averaging 15 to 20km a day, 4 or 5 days a week for a large part of the last 6 to 9 months. This has been wonderful for my fitness if not for the health of my work boots – I’ve managed to wear out two pairs so far.
Nothing stops Rob’s dedication to walking for geophysics
Fortunately all this walking has an added benefit, it’s turned out to be perfect training for a charity event I’m taking part in from the 26th May to the 4rd June. Away from archaeology I like to play a lot of field hockey. Depending on who I’m talking to I either describe myself as an archaeologist who happens to play hockey, or a hockey player with a sideline in archaeology. I have been very fortunate and proud to belong to a charity hockey team called ‘Hockey for Heroes’ for the last five years. We raise funds for Help for Heroes, by mixing exceptional physical exertion combined with playing hockey.
Playing hockey in rather better weather
This year’s challenge is our biggest yet and involves walking from Sophia Gardens in Cardiff to Marlow Hockey Club in Buckinghamshire. Along the way we’ll visit various hockey clubs and play 30 games of hockey over the 10 day period. We will also be taking it in turn to carry a stretcher containing former Royal Marine Dominic Lovett who was injured during a military training exercise and is now tetraplegic.
Duration: 10 days
Distance carrying stretcher: 200 miles
Hockey Games: 30
Squad size: 40
The #OpStretcher squad
We will also have the Great Britain Men’s Hockey Team Manager, Andy Halliday, supporting us on our journey by dribbling a hockey ball along the entire route behind the stretcher!
As you can probably imagine it’s not an easy task we’ve set ourselves this year, and hopefully we will be able to raise as much money as possible. If you’d like to help sponsor me visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Robert-Evershed or text OPST71 £5 or OPST71 £10 to 70070
I’m very hopeful that the many, many weeks of geophysical surveying that I’ve done will provide perfect training for this event, and I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this. I will be making regular updates on twitter https://twitter.com/robertevershed to let everyone know how we’re getting along, and more information can be found at https://hockeyforheroes.co.uk/