Greetings!

I guess this is my chance to inspire you to donate some of your hard earned cash for a truly worthy cause. God I'm going to have to pull out all the stops now I can see! Emotional blackmail - Check. Guilt trip - Check!

15th of August is the day. The day when I begin a 950 mile bike ride from John O'Groats in bonny scoootland, all the way down to Land's End in deepest Cornwall. I aim to complete the ride in 11 days, averaging around 85-90 miles per day.

I will be riding by myself, with no support or back up for the duration, which gives the whole experience that little bit of an edge to it!

What possess a man to do such a challenge? Is he trying to prove himself? Test himself? Push himself to his limits? Or is it simply the chance to wear some rather snazzy, skin hugging lycra for 11 days straight - I'll let you be the judge of that!

Raising money - There are so many different charities out there these days. All doing fantastic work, and all relying on generous donations to survive in hard times. It can be impossible to choose between them because you can't help everyone. I hate asking for money and wouldn't dream of pushing anyone into donating. Hopefully you feel that this trip is sufficiently difficult that it is worthy of a few pennies, I can assure you, it is going to be hard work!

Why Samaritans?

Samaritans are a wonderful organisation and mean a great deal to me. A great deal.

Samaritans are there on the end of the phone, providing people with emotional support, in a totally confidential and non-judgemental environment. They are there 24/7, providing help for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, and feelings which may lead to suicide.

Across the UK, Samaritans are visited once every 6 seconds. That could be a telephone call, an email, letter or face to face visit at one of their centres.

Samaritans will not give you advice, or try to tell you what to do, or how you should be feeling. They will respect a callers decision, and support them, whatever that decision may be.

Their are times in all of our lives when we are feeling down. It could be for any reason - death of a loved one, health problems, money worries, relationship problems - the list is endless. It happens to us all. Sometimes it can be hard to talk with family or friends, you may feel like not wanting to burden them or worry them. But we all need people to talk to.

The world can seem a mad, crazy place sometimes, where nothing that goes on makes sense. Their is no doubt that our lives are getting busier and more and more stressful, and we don't seem to have 5 minutes for ourselves. Our society reflects that.

There's very few places you can go to in the world where you can pick up a telephone and another human being, no matter why they're doing it, will listen to you unconditionally. If you want to pour out in a phonecall, they will listen for hours, for as long as you need them to.

Yeovil & Sherborne Samaritans are based in The Park, Yeovil. They are staffed entirely by volunteers, and recieve no central funding, relying entirely on donations. While we may not always be aware of them, they are quietly working away, providing a vital, vital service for people.

Samaritans are run by people from all walks of life, providing support for people from all walks of life.

To find out more about what we do, visit www.samaritans.org or click on the video on your left.

I hope that you can see that they mean a great deal to me, and if you feel like you would like to donate, I would be very humbled and very grateful.

Many thanks

Simon x