It really is a worthwhile cause..

A group of us will be attempting to cycle the 140 miles from Whitehaven to Tynemouth on the 21st & 22nd of September to raise money for the Sheffield Children's Hospital Charity (please read more details below). Please help us in raising as much money as possible by sponsoring me.

As most of you will know, my cycling experience is limited to the very occasional muddy venture into the Peak District on my mountain bike. I am by no means a regular cyclisterer-er and as such the Coast to Coast ride will be a challenge (perhaps more than it was intended to be, given it's only two and a half weeks away and I've ridden twice for about an hour and a half, by way of training). Anyway please support me in my efforts by digging deep and donating whatever you can.

For those who aren't aware, Sheffield Children's Hospital is one of only 4 specialist Children's hospitals in the UK. Those of us resident in Sheffield and the surrounding areas are very fortunate
to have such a specialised and renowned centre in our locality. Indeed up until the rankings were stopped 2 years ago SCH was consistently ranked as the top such centre in the UK. However, SCH has to do this on a shoestring, with the lowest charity fundraising of all four centres.

On top of this SCH currently operate out of facilities which are in huge need of an update, indeed, their continued government funding has been made dependant upon an extension and modernisation programme:

http://www.tchc.org.uk/our-plans

This is a £40m redevelopment, of which the The Children's Hospital Charity needs to cover £20m. Our aim in doing this is to help towards that target, obviously we're not going to raise £20m
unless we find some very generous sponsors, however if we raise £25,000 we can pay for one of the state of the art rooms which the hospital desperately require.