My daughter Gracie has been battling Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma for the last three years. This form of cancer is particularly aggressive, and typically starts off in the soft tissue in the body (in her case her nose). In 2014 our family went to America so Gracie could receive Proton Therapy, all paid for by our fantastic NHS, and in the periods while she’s been receiving chemotherapy has been cared for by the brilliant Ward 84 in Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

Ward 84 deals specifically with Children’s Oncology, and we’ve spent a lot of time there. It’s fair to say that although they do an amazing job in providing the best care a child in this heart breaking situation could wish to have, they’re massively underfunded given their mammoth task. Over the last few years Caroline and I have used our wedding as a fund raiser, I’ve ran a marathon and various other things resulting in raising over £10,000 for charities such as Kids ‘n’ Cancer, CLIC Sargent and Macmillans. However we’ve never done anything yet for Ward 84 specifically. The support we have received has always been staggering, but there’s always more we can do. So it's time for a challenge!

On October 12th I’m going to walk from my house in Manchester to the top of Mount Snowdon, then walk back home again. This ‘trip’ is over 180 miles and I haven’t really planned how it’s going to work yet, but that’s the challenge I suppose! (Watch out for the updates on this page) The other consideration is that at the top of Snowdon I’m going to raise a glass of something to salute the Ward, and that will be my first drop of alcohol from when I’ve launched this challenge today (seven months!). I’ve got no idea which part of the challenge is going to be more difficult...

All charities are great, but Ward 84 in particular has had a rough ride recently, so I’d love to be able to give them a bit of a boost coming into winter.

Any help you can give will be most welcome x