Bray brothers and friends complete 200km Thames Row for 'personal' cause

Brothers from Bray and their friends have braved another gruelling physical challenge to raise money for two charities – including one close to their hearts due to a family loss.

Ben and Felix Thum started out supporting the Oddballs Foundation, which raises awareness of testicular cancer, with a London-to-Brussels bike ride in 2023.

The pair, alongside Felix’s twin sister Louisa, also arranged two 12-hour days of football in 2024 for the same cause.

Now the brothers have rowed from Lechlade (at the edge of the Cotswolds) to London along the Thames – a distance of about 200km – alongside friends from secondary school who live in Maidenhead and Marlow.

This time, the challenge is in aid of both Oddballs and the Meningitis Research Foundation, with money raised being split 50-50 between them.

The row has a special meaning, as it is in memory of Ben and Felix Thum’s brother Fred, who died of meningitis at a young age.

The team started at Lechlade on Tuesday, and it was a race against the clock to get to a fundraising party booked in Twickenham for Thursday 6pm.

To get there on time, they had to cover 40 miles a day, stopping at Abingdon on the first night, Bray on the second and then finally in London.

Felix said the idea was to ramp up the physical challenge from the previous events.

A row down the Thames ‘seemed like the perfect thing’, he said, as The Thames is somewhere in which family and friends have been based as the young men were growing up.

Speaking to the Advertiser on Wednesday afternoon, Felix said:

“It’s going brilliantly – although we get less rest than I think many of us thought we would.

“Everyone is up at five [in the morning] and we’re in the water just before seven. We did 10 hours on the water yesterday, which was about 42 miles.”

For sleep, they have been able to stop at team member’s houses overnight and are getting food along the route.

“Luckily enough, our parents are and dropping food off at the locks every five or so locks,” said Felix.

“We’re eating during the period where the locks are going down because we don’t really have time to stop.”

He added: “[This challenge] is unique of our fundraisers in the fact that it’s more personal.

“The Meningitis Research Foundation is really close to us. We lost our older brother, Fred, to meningitis when he was about four years old.

“He was born eight years before me, so I never actually met him, but’s it’s had a profound impact.

“It’s hard to describe – it’s what could have been. All of us siblings get on great together. I can only imagine how great it would have been if we had another one of us.”

The rowers – the Thum brothers, Tom Marshall, Toby Fry, Lucas Barnett, Louis Coleman-Seed and Ollie Dearman, went through Boulters Lock on the morning of day three, Thursday.

So far, the team have raised north of £4,380 on their funding page, which can be found at givestar.io/gs/source-2-sea-row-2025