Charity rowers to walk 100 miles carrying their boat

The There She Rows team plans to cross the Atlantic

A team of rowers will walk 100 miles (161km) carrying their boat to try to inspire girls and women to get into sport.

Victoria Monk, from Nottingham, and three friends aim to complete the walk across the South Downs in four days over the Easter Weekend.

They will start from Winchester, in Hampshire, and trek to Eastbourne in East Sussex.

They said they hoped to set a world record.

If they succeed, they will have walked the furthest distance carrying a boat ever recorded.

Team captain Ms Monk, 30, said the Easter challenge is part of the team's wider There She Rows Atlantic Challenge in which she, Ana Zigic, 27, Ellie Reynolds, 24, and 26-year-old Molly Green will row 3,000 miles (4,828km) from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua at the end of 2023.

Ms Monk said thousands of girls dropped out of sports each year - and she wanted that to change

Ms Monk said: "More than half of girls will quit playing sport by age 17, missing out on its myriad benefits for the rest of their lives. We want to change that.

"All four of us have been lucky enough to benefit from sport throughout our lives - physically, mentally, personally and professionally - and we want to help inspire the next generation of girls and women to fall in love with sport and exercise.

"We wanted to walk the length of the South Downs Way to help raise the profile and inspire more women and girls to get into sport.

"By carrying the rowing boat with us, we represent the myriad barriers that currently exist preventing girls from getting involved with, or staying in sport.

"We are walking 100 miles which is a mile for every 10,000 girls that will drop out of sport this year."

The group is fundraising for Women's Sport Trust, Endometriosis UK and Teenage Cancer Trust.