Daren Parr

Cabbies Do Atlantic Row Team Member

Daren Parr

Adventure has driven me for many years now. After sitting in my taxi at Liverpool Street Station one day reading an article in a Taxi Newspaper asking for volunteers to take part in a TV series called Extreme Dreams with Ben Fogle my life changed.

I was lucky enough to be selected and it had started, I had been bitten by the adventure bug. Its now one of the things that drives me on everyday. It helps me to make the right decisions with diet, stops me from drinking too much and encourages me to walk and exercise regularly. When my friend and fellow Taxi driver Rosh Varma called me and told me of this crazy idea, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I loved it.

We sat down and put a team of fellow London Taxi drivers together, guys we knew would be crazy enough to love the idea too, but also with the drive and attitude to go through with it. With the guys having a combined age of over 200 years they had to be a team that would be dedicated, men who we knew we could trust our lives with if it came to it. John, Bob and Stuart are those guys, all having their own reason for taking on this adventure of a lifetime.

With none of us having ever done any ocean rowing or having any experience in this field, what are we striving for? Apart from completing the crossing safely it is to raise awareness and funds for two charities that are very important to us. The Stroke Association UK and The London Taxi Drivers Charity for Military Veterans.

As London Taxi drivers we are all too aware of what happens to your body if you don’t look after it properly. Having a stroke is just one result that can happen and we became all too aware of this recently in our build up to this challenge when one of our original team members Rosh Varma suffered a stroke and we saw first hand the affect it has had on his life!

Having been one of the original challenge team, Rosh although very much still part of our team, has had to withdraw from the rowing it is just not practical for him to be taking such a risk.

Thank God he has now become one of the 1.3 Million survivors in the UK and is making a fast recovery but as a stroke has such a devastating affect on the human body, it is going to take time before he is going to be able to physically take on something like this, we have nothing but admiration for him. Talking to him we can understand just how simple daily tasks can become so difficult. One of the main effects of the stroke is Rosh has lost the ability to swallow, so he is now being fed by a “PEG” that has been inserted into his stomach. Although this is keeping him alive, he has lost a huge amount of weight and is looking great. Ironically the PEG that’s keeping him alive is preventing him from rowing with us because of the risk of infection. Rosh has shown incredible resilience and is a great inspiration to stroke suffers and what he has gone through has highlighted even more the importance of our message to people. “ Live your life, but look after it “

For us to undertake this enormous challenge and get our very important message out to people, we need partners and row sponsors. This is a great opportunity for any organisation or company to do something good and play a major part in our exciting journey

Thank you, for your consideration

Daren Parr

Bob Barber

Having no experience of rowing a boat across the Atlantic ocean, this will certainly be a test emotionally physically and mentally. But isn’t that the reason why people do these sort of things, to accept the challenge to test yourself and to push your own personal limits?…

>> READ MORE