So the mission for camel milk turned out to be quite the mission indeed. About three weeks ago, I received a devastating call from my UK supplier of camel milk - Ahmed Al-Suweidi. Ahmed lives in Bolton and imports the camel milk from the Netherlands - from here. However, during the months of January, February and March, the camels in Holland were not producing enough milk to export to the UK. So Ahmed called me to tell me that unfortunately there was a strong possibility I would not have the camel milk in time to do the campaign in April.
Disaster. I explained to Ahmed the importance of the campaign and that I was trying to raise money for Brain Tumour Ireland. In a desperate plea, I asked him was there anything he could do to ensure the campaign still went ahead. Being the gentleman that he is, Ahmed called all of his customers in the UK to see if they could help in any way. To our surprise, a customer (Shane from Leeds) got back to us and said that he had 75 bottles of frozen milk and that he would be willing to sell them to me considering the effort I was making for charity. What's more, Shane was willing to drive to Bolton, from his home town in Leeds, and deliver the bottles to Ahmed.
Excellent. We're back in business! Ahmed then organised for the 75 bottles to be specially delivered from his freezer in Bolton to my house here in North London. The bottles were to be specially wrapped and packaged and still frozen by the time they reached my place in London.....but he "couldn't promise anything". Not ideal.
I was expecting the milk to arrive on Saturday 16th March - sometime in the early morning. On that day, my doorbell rang (as expected) but by the time I managed to scamper down, the delivery man had left. What an idiot! Why would he leave within than a minute of ringing the bell? For the next hour, I painstakingly rang every Parcel Force depot in London trying to locate the whereabouts of my very-soon-to-be-melted camel milk. Eventually I had tracked it to a depot in Camden. I quickly jumped on the train, arrived in Camden, sprinted to the depot and was fortunate enough to make it there before the close at 12.30pm! To finish off the great escape, I managed to convince one of the drivers to bring me back to my house, with the two boxes of milk, all free of charge. Happy Days!
So to recap, the journey the bottles of camel milk traveled before arriving at my house was:
Holland to Bolton
Bolton to Leeds
Leeds back to Bolton
Bolton to London depot
London depot to my house
What an effort - but it will be all worth it! If you feel like you would like to donate to my campaign, please click here.
Disaster. I explained to Ahmed the importance of the campaign and that I was trying to raise money for Brain Tumour Ireland. In a desperate plea, I asked him was there anything he could do to ensure the campaign still went ahead. Being the gentleman that he is, Ahmed called all of his customers in the UK to see if they could help in any way. To our surprise, a customer (Shane from Leeds) got back to us and said that he had 75 bottles of frozen milk and that he would be willing to sell them to me considering the effort I was making for charity. What's more, Shane was willing to drive to Bolton, from his home town in Leeds, and deliver the bottles to Ahmed.
Excellent. We're back in business! Ahmed then organised for the 75 bottles to be specially delivered from his freezer in Bolton to my house here in North London. The bottles were to be specially wrapped and packaged and still frozen by the time they reached my place in London.....but he "couldn't promise anything". Not ideal.
I was expecting the milk to arrive on Saturday 16th March - sometime in the early morning. On that day, my doorbell rang (as expected) but by the time I managed to scamper down, the delivery man had left. What an idiot! Why would he leave within than a minute of ringing the bell? For the next hour, I painstakingly rang every Parcel Force depot in London trying to locate the whereabouts of my very-soon-to-be-melted camel milk. Eventually I had tracked it to a depot in Camden. I quickly jumped on the train, arrived in Camden, sprinted to the depot and was fortunate enough to make it there before the close at 12.30pm! To finish off the great escape, I managed to convince one of the drivers to bring me back to my house, with the two boxes of milk, all free of charge. Happy Days!
So to recap, the journey the bottles of camel milk traveled before arriving at my house was:
Holland to Bolton
Bolton to Leeds
Leeds back to Bolton
Bolton to London depot
London depot to my house
What an effort - but it will be all worth it! If you feel like you would like to donate to my campaign, please click here.
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