In January this year my son Harry was born with 'Galactosaemia' this is an illness which affects 1 in every 50,000 people so is particularly rare. In the first two weeks of his life he became ill with no explanation despite feeding and appearing well, after a serious sequence of events we ended up in the Royal Victoria Infirmary at Newcastle.

As a family we were worrying about where to stay as well as the constant fear of Harry's wellbeing, but we were extremely well supported by The Sick Childrens Trust who offered us a 'Home from Home' in the form of Crawford House on the Hospital site.

Harry's diagnosis was fairly rapid thanks to the swift work of doctors at Whitehaven and Newcastle and our stay was only 5 days which is extremely minor in comparison to some of the families with poorly children. Some of these families are in such accomodation for months and months and are never charged thanks to charities such as 'The Sick Childrens Trust' which allows them to lead a normal life whilst caring for their Child.

Reading the cards of thanks whilst in the accomodation really hit home and sparked myself and my friends into a fund raising effort to support other families in the running of these fantastic facilities.

My colleagues, friends and I are taking on 2 cycle challenges this year the first is 8-10th July 2011 where we will aim to cycle around every Rugby Club in Cumbria covering some 265 miles over the 3 days, this will be done with the Cumbria RU Development Team where we will also take on a challenge at each club en route! The second ride will be 25-27th October where i aim to cycle with 2 of my best friends on the Coast 2 Coact Reivers Route covering around 185 miles!

All this is in aid of 'The Sick Childrens Trust' and further details of their work can be found on - http://www.sickchildrenstrust.org/ 

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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Another experience from a friend;

"A great cause Liam, I spent 4 weeks with the Sick Childrens Trust - Crawford House at the RVI following the birth of my little girl Millie.  I can’t stress how much it helped relieve the pressure of not being divided between home and RVI especially as my husband was self employed at the time (there is no help out there for people who are self employed and if you not working your not earning!) it really allowed us to be with Millie and I think that made a real difference to her survival and then recovery (she’s a little rogue now though!).  They were great gave us a room so that my 3 year old (at the time) could stay with us too."

So please dig deep and donate now.

Many Thanks

Liam Nicholls / Trevor Richardson / Kieran Marshall / Graham Kidd / Martin Grealish / Russell Gainford / Shelley Atkinson / Garry Holmes / Alan Moses & Philip Harvey!