On 6th May 2008 my very dear friends Ray and Karen Hart tragically lost their beautiful daughter Evie to a rare and very aggressive form of cancer.  Evie endured a highly intensive and painful programme of treatment, predominantly under the care of Great Ormond Street Hospital, but when all attempts to beat the disease failed Evie returned home to spend the last few weeks of her short life in the loving comfort of her family and close friends.

During this traumatic time Evie and her family were very fortunate to have the advantage of the specialist and dedicated care provided by Demelza Children's Hospice in Sittingbourne.  The love, patience and overwhelming support the family received helped them through those most precious last days of Evie's life and the Hospice still provides that support in the family's ongoing battle to come to terms with their loss.

Last year, on the first anniverisary of Evie's passing, Ray, myself and ten other friends embarked on a successful 50 mile cycle ride to raise money for the Hospice.  With your fantastic generosity and support we managed to raise almost £29,000 which enabled Demelza to meet the annual cost of employing two full-time trained carers.  This  achievement has now inspired us to endure the "saddle pain" once again but this time to ambitiously cycle from London to Paris in four days in September!  Our hope is that we can complete the arduous 470km journey and, in doing so, raise more money for an organisation who rely almost entirely on charitable donations.

Training has begun and extra padding is now on the saddle and although this trek is a somewhat daunting one for such novice cyclists, we hope that whatever money we can raise will again be used by the Hospice to continue their fantastic work  in supporting other unfortunate families who face the same situation Ray, Karen and Joe had to confront two years ago.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.