Cancer survivor among Shropshire rowing team looking to conquer the Atlantic

Maybe it's because Shropshire is a landlocked county and we all yearn for a life on the ocean wave.

Maybe it's because most people in the county only experience calm seas - during a day trip to to the Welsh coast in the summer or on their annual holiday abroad.

One the other hand it could be Shrewsbury's links with rowing, boat houses on the River Severn, clubs including Pengwern, the Shropshire Adventure Rowing Club and the annual Dragon boat and Coracle races which raise thousands of pounds for charity.

Whatever the reason it seems the county has an affinity with one of the toughest rowing challenge in the world.

For the third year running Shropshire will have a team in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.

Just 30 teams will set off on December 12 from San Sebastian in La Gomera on the Canary Islands bound for Nelson’s Dockyard, English Harbour, Antigua and Barbuda. The 3000 mile journey and will take around 55 days during which the rower will face enormous seas, extremes in weather, sleep deprivation, blisters and salt rash, oh, and the fear of capsizing in shark inhabited waters.

The Shropshire based team in this year's event is the Atlantic Mavericks, rowers who are all ex-forces and describe themselves as four ordinary chaps, all in their 50s, relishing the physical and mental challenge.

Ian Davies from Oswestry and Roy Dixon from Shrewsbury will be joined by Ian Duncan from Devon and Richard 'Tiny' Baker, from Somerset, the only member with a rowing pedigree.

It was the idea of Ian Davies, who having just recovered from bone marrow cancer, wanted to prove that cancer does not have to stop you doing amazing things.

They are still fundraising to cover the £85,000 that they say has been a low budget cost of racing - including buying their boat on ebay and spending hours restoring it. Once they are underway they will launch their just giving page for the charities they will be supporting.

The Atlantic Mavericks will follow in the rowing steps of last year's Shropshire entrant, Kelda Wood, and the 2017 Shropshire team, the Atlantic Ladies.

Last year also saw former Shrewsbury High School pupil, Kate Salmon, take part. The scientific consultant with the Met Office in Exeter, was in the four-woman Row For the Ocean crew.

Kelda, from Shrewsbury became the first solo adaptive rower to cross the Atlantic, her remarkable one woman journey taking 76 days while the Atlantic Ladies set three world records, at 60 days the fastest female trio to row the Atlantic, the oldest and in member, Di Carrington, 62, the oldest woman to complete the journey.

Their adventures so captured the imaginations of the public they were made into a musical by playwright and broadcaster Chris Eldon Lee.

The Atlantic Ladies admitted their scariest times came in the last 24 hours when, in huge seas as they neared Antigua they capsized twice and didn't think they would make the finish.

For Kelda it was not the physical challenge but the mental one that proved the toughest.

She was left needing an operation to fuse her ankle after a huge hay bale fell on her in 2002 ending a promising horseriding future.

Her marathon journey raised money for her charity, Climbing Out, which runs five-day outdoor activity programmes for people aged 16-30 who have been through a life changing injury, illness or trauma.

She was worried that, despite adapting the footplate of the boat to help her ankle, her disability would be her biggest problem.

However she said it was dealing with the solitude which was her toughest challenger, something she realised after just day two.

That will not be a problem for the Atlantic Mavericks. In fact Ian says their challenge will be not falling out with each other over the trip.

They will work in pairs as they cross the Atlantic, rowing and sleeping in two-hour cycles.

Ian Davies said: "When you are in such a small space for such a long time you learn a lot about each other, I realised that when I took part in the Mongol car rally.

"We have decided crew comfort is a priority and every day we will take time out to discuss what we have done well and what we could have done better."

He said his biggest fear was not sharks.

"You have to be pretty unlucky to be in the water at the same time that a shark is looking for dinner. My biggest fear is how to ensure that we will still be friends at the end of the challenge. We want to ensure that if something is wrong members of the team can have their say and then get on with the challenge. It is a mind set. You can choose to be miserable or you can say, ok, this is not good but tomorrow will be a better day."

The men are getting help for dealing with the physical and mental challenges from experts at the University Centre, Shrewsbury, and the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

John Buckley, Professor of Exercise Medicine at UCS, said: “We want to reduce as much as possible the controllable short-term harms of such an event to prevent any lasting harm. Our primary aim is to get them to the start-line with the right amount of strength, endurance and flexibility. During the race, it will then mainly be a battle of psychological will and teamwork.”

Unlike the two previous Shropshire teams, the Atlantic Mavericks have no ambitions of breaking records.

Their aims include inspiring people to do their own challenges and fundraising for three charities, the Royal British Legion, another forces charity, 353.org.uk and Myeloma UK.

The latter was chosen because it was the cancer Ian Davies was diagnosed with shortly after taking part in a Channel relay swim. He had a bone marrow transplant in 2015 followed by 18 months of treatment.

"I couldn't walk 18 months ago, didn't have a team or the money to enter. Now we are just weeks away from setting on the the Atlantic Challenge," he said.