By: Blonde Two
Ladies and GentleBlondes, we have an announcement to make!
The Two Blondes have been chosen by Ordnance Survey to be Get Outside Champions for 2016.
Just to make sure that you are as excited about this as we are, here is a quote from the glad tidings email that we were sent. “We were overwhelmed with the number and quality of candidates, so to be selected is a real achievement.”
We are still learning about our new role; we know that we are going to have special clothes to wear, we know that we will meet the other Get Outside champions in February, and we know that we are going to spend the year getting outside and encouraging other people to do the same. We will also be doing lots of Ordnance Survey map work, which is easy for us because we are avid map collecters. Blonde One even has her own (most excellent) way of folding an OS map. We will tell you about that sometime. Here is a picture of us enjoying OL28.
One thing that we are really pleased about is that our new-found ‘Champion’ status will hopefully bring a bit of additional publicity to Dartmoor. With National Park budgets all over the country being squeezed, this has got to be a good thing.
So, we Blondes are making special preparations; Blonde One is polishing her glass compass, I am buying sparkly gold laces for my walking boots and we are both waterproofing our tiaras. World wide fame has taken its time coming, but I think we are finally there! We are the GetOutside champions …
And so the strip-tease continues, started years ago with a wisp of hair, a boot, dirt under a finger-nail. Now becoming more and more explicit. Ending on New Year’s Day 2018 with the complete dental records of both of you.
My dears, what you have done comes perilously close to boasting. And we’re all English, you know. We leave boasting to those of a foreign stripe; those who need to blow their own trumpet to compensate for their lack of Englishness.
And the award you’ve won – it’s so ambiguous. It could be an exhortation, recommending that outside is where you ought to go.
Just horribly jealous, as you can guess. I once won an electric razor in a prize draw and that was my sole out-of-life experience. The pair of you have them all the time and throughly deserve recognition. You bring transfusions of well-being to the world and will both win Damehoods in your sere and withered time. My blessings; if I’m able I’ll see you in Stockholm when you win The Big One.
Congratulations. An apt and rightly deserved award I should think.
I understand the OS award is intended to give people who have a passion for being outdoors a fantastic chance to share that enthusiasm with others and to get them out and loving it too. What a wonderful aim in times when we are all being told by the Health Service of the benefits of exercise – and of the harm being caused to the nation from a young age by lack of it.
It’s great that OS have taken this on board and come up with something that, through ambassadors like Two Blondes, has the potential to be of great health benefit for many in our nation, old and young alike. Teach people at a young age to get out and be active, and early onset of health problems is less likely and a lifetime of benefit can result, to say nothing of all the good which could be passed on by those folk to subsequent generations. The family that strays together stays together? Hee-hee. They’ll have less obesity, diabetes and heart problems anyway!
Now, if only there was some way your new status could be put to use within the education system. I’m sure they would see the advantages in starting the ball rolling where it really stood chance of doing some long-term good…