Myself and Louise are walking and camping the North Coast 500 unaided, starting on the 1st of May and finishing on the 23rd of May. we will be carrying all our equipment with us.

We are doing this to raise money for the following charity's,

PAPYRUS UK - Suicide prevention

CRISIS UK - Homelessness

DrugFam - Addiction

Change Mental Health - All Mental health issues

The Veterans Foundation - For our heroes

Why are we doing this......

On the 5th of December 2020 Louise's oldest son (My step son) Ciaran committed suicide aged 29, leaving behind his children, family and friends.

We will never know the reason behind it and we didn't realise things were so bad for him that he thought suicide was the only answer.

He seemed happy, he was planning the future, starting a new job, taking driving lessons, doing what every 29 year old does. Nobody knew that day would be his last, we all know about suicide, we all know the stats..... we all think it will never happen to our family.

On the 31st of October 2021 we lost a daughter Siobhan aged 33 to Sceptacemia following an operation, Siobhan had previously been a victim of domestic abuse which led to alcoholism. She was always helping others and always put other peoples life before her own.

So a double tragedy within 11 months, we decided we wanted to help people but didn't know what to do, we started a Mental health awareness group on Facebook called S.H.A.D.E Mental Awareness, we have helped a few people through that but it wasn't enough.

We came up with the very sensible idea of Walking 516 miles, then we added camping every night (in a tent) then we thought "we might as well do it unaided"

We are putting ourselves through discomfort, pain and probably (definitely) exhaustion to raise awareness and moneys for charity.

Thank you for your time, and hopefully your donation, any amount at all will be much appreciated and put to good use.

David and Louise