Ashley Partridge

L-R: Pam Walker, Steve Allnutt, Cllr Brothwell, Cllr Renshaw, Julie Renshaw, Jeff Boyall

Former City of Lincoln Mayor, Councillor Kathleen Brothwell, awarded over £6,500 to two local charities on Wednesday.

At a special presentation ceremony in The Guildhall, she presented cheques to Lincoln Integrated Domestic Abuse Services (LIDAS) and Home-Start. She was joined by former Sheriff Councillor Robin Renshaw, former Sheriff’s Lady Judith Renshaw and former Mayor’s Consort Jeff Boyall.

LIDAS was the councillor’s chosen organisation and received £5,543.82. It helps families who are affected by domestic abuse, by providing an outreach service to men, women and children.

They hold group work sessions and have developed free iPhone and Android apps to help people who think they may be an abuser.

Manager of LIDAS, Julie Rimington (picture below, centre), said: “A lot of fundraising focuses on victims but potential abusers need advice too, so we try to provide help both ends of the spectrum.”

Councillor Brothwell also donated £1,000 to Home-Start. The charity focuses on giving support to families who are struggling with a range of difficulties.

Some of its volunteers help parents who find it hard to look after disabled children, feel isolated or simply need assistance around the home.

Home-Start chair, Steve Allnutt and vice chair, Pam Walker, were on hand to accept the cheque. Allnutt said: “We have amazing volunteers who go into people’s home and help them out. We also put on summer and christmas events for children.”

The former Mayor said: “The amount of money that was raised for LIDAS and Homestart last year is absolutely fantastic and I can’t thank the people who donated enough. This huge amount of money will make a different to hundreds of people’s lives, which is what I set out to achieve by choosing the charity.”

Chris Farrell aims to break the world record with Sally Hoonaert

Two members of the Lincoln Rowing Centre will attempt to break a world record over the bank holiday weekend.

Chris Farrell and Sally Hoonaert aim to keep an indoor rowing machine continuously moving for 72 hours.

Currently, the Mixed Tandem Continuous Indoor Rowing world record stands at 60 hours. However, Chris and Sally want to smash that and have set their sights higher.

They will take it in turns and their breaks will be limited to just four hours. If the machine stops, so does the record attempt.

Last year, The Lincolnite saw Chris make a world record by rowing continuously for 41 hours.

On Friday, August 24, he looks set to begin clocking in three-days as part of a tandem and explained the game plan.

He said: “I learned from the single record about what works and what doesn’t.

“We’re planning to start doing one hour on, one hour off until midnight. Then someone will do 4 hours while one sleeps. For the first night, we’ll see how we do on 3 hours sleep and go from there.”

The event is being held at the Holiday Inn hotel on the Brayford and will form part of a weekend run by the Lincoln Rowing Centre.

The aim is to raise money for Kidney Research UK, the club and improve the sport’s profile in the city.

Special accessibility boats will be on hand to help newcomers and disabled people try their hand at rowing.

Lincoln Rowing Centre’s Steve Hill said: “We’ve had a lot more female interest of late, especially after the gold medal wins at the Olympics by Sophie Hosking and Katherine Copeland.”