What are we doing?

Holly and I are cycling the height of Mt Everest - 8,848 meters of climbing - (Mike) and Matterhorn - 4,478 meters of climbing - (Holly) in 3.5 days (September 20-23) in the French Alps in September for the new Thames Hospice! We'll be riding iconic Tour De France climbs accompanied by professional cycling racers and pro vehicle support, so wish us luck! Better still, your support for the amazing Thames Hospice would be hugely appreciated. We are riding to help build a new £22M home for the hospice by Bray lake near Windsor, UK. Set to be Europe's best hospice with 28 inpatient private ensuite rooms, extensive day therapy and outpatient facilities, large hospice at home care team and education centre for other care organisations. Quality of care is genuinely exceptional and not surprisingly, demand is huge. In addition to the cost of the hospice, £7M a year is required to run it and much of this comes from private support. If you'd like to join the trip, please go to www.bigmountainchallenge.com. Help us climb our mountains so Thames Hospice patients can climb theirs. 

Important Information

We are covering all of our costs as well as the minimum fundraising requirement for participation in the event - see our page for verification!!!  Every $/£/€ that you contribute will go directly to the charity for building the new hospice facility.  The picture in our profile is the current state of construction of the hospice centre.

We have done a lot of physical and mental preparation for this challenge... it will be brutally hard, but very satisfying to complete (hopefully).  Holly has taken up cycling this year with a lot of hard training and just completed her first "century ride" (100 miles) at the Prudential RideLondon (on August 3rd).  Mike has completed two "century rides" in the last 3 months as well as losing 12 kgs (the weight of almost 2 bicycles) in the last six months in preparation for this event (and hopefully 5 kg's more before the start of the ride).

 Why are we doing it?

Almost every one of us has been affected by cancer...relatives / friends / colleagues, etc.  This is an opportunity for us to show our support for all of those impacted and raise proceeds to help those in their time of need.

More specifically, for history on the origin of this project... When our very good friend Jason was 8, his father Paul Bevan was a successful businessman, ex-professional sportsman and full of energy. Diagnosed with cancer at the age of 42, he died in months. At a time of extreme personal demands on every level, Jason's mum Penny realised the support for patients and families with terminal illness was heavily under resourced. She combined forces with Paul's close friend and local GP to sponsor Macmillan nurses to help others in the same plight. With strong need for its services, the resource grew steadily and in 1995 the Paul Bevan Day Hospice was built in Ascot. Now merged with another hospice to form Thames Hospice, this amazing and highly reputed organisation has grown to become an important provider of palliative care. Inspired by both his parents, Jason has remained committed to the hospice throughout his life and in response to the £6M appeal to help fund the new hospice (which includes the Paul Bevan Centre), Jason pulled close friends and family contacts together to create the Big Mountain Challenge. The event hopes to make a substantial contribution to the construction of the phenomenal new home for Thames Hospice and it's new approach to end of life care.  

Thank you for the support!

With much love,

Holly and Mike