From the age of 48, I could see my 50th birthday looming and I felt that I wanted to do something amazing not for myself but to give something to people in the community. My interests are in cycling, both as a daily commute to work and at the weekends for my own enjoyment. I work as a site manager at a high school and see hundreds of children daily learning, socialising, having fun, and living a full, active life. These are the lucky ones. While most of our children can take it for granted that they can eat, sleep, play, and learn, there are less fortunate children for whom waking up in a morning is a great achievement. Getting through a day from morning to night can be an uphill struggle, and some of those children will not make it to adulthood. As a father of five children and one grandchild, I consider myself and my family to be extremely fortunate and could only imagine the heart-wrenching suffering that other parents go through when they watch their child struggling to take their next breathe or see pain in their faces as they struggle with a crippling illness. I wanted to do something selfless and worthwhile to mark my 50th birthday, and decided that the best thing I could do was a bike ride from Lands’ End to John O’ Groats. I chose the Jump Children’s Charity as I felt this is the kind of support I wanted to give. The Jump Children’s Charities aim is to bring happy and meaningful experiences to terminally ill children and their families so that they may have special memories to cherish. Having never done anything like this before, I am expecting this to be extremely challenging both mentally and physically. It will be the support of those following my progress, your encouragement and your donations that will give me the strength and the momentum to achieve this and fight my way through the challenges that I will face on this journey. I shall be starting my epic journey at the beginning of August 2019 my plan is to do 100 miles a day for 10 days.
