Hi. My friend Molly and I have decided to cycle the distance from our dance studio in Blaydon to the middle of Glasgow on exercise bikes! We'll be splitting the distance between us and cycling it in one go on Wednesday 26 July. It's a distance of 151 miles, and we expect it to take around 6 hours of cycling.

Why are we doing it? The World Championships in 2024 will be held in Glasgow and after my team narrowly missed out on a globe last year, this one is more important than ever to us. Irish dancing is an expensive sport, and we travel quite a lot around the country and overseas during the year. Our dance school fundraises constantly to help those in the school with travel costs. In April around 30 of us travelled to Canada which was amazing, and the fundraising pot helped us considerably, but now it's rather empty. Although Glasgow will be fairly inexpensive, we want to help put money back into the pot so there are opportunities for dancers in years to come. This is likely to be the last year that I compete as I'll hopefully be going off to university next year, so the last lot of fundraising I'll be doing! I'd be really grateful if you were able to sponsor me. Many thanks! Helena