In 2018, I ran the Nottingham marathon, and with the generous support of friends and family, raised over £22,500 which we used to upgrade facilities at a boarding school in Vella Lavella, the island in the Solomons where I was born. WIth these funds we were able to set up a computer department and establish a science laboratory for the school.

My new project is to run another marathon (at Goodwood on 04.12.22) and through sponsorship to raise money to donate to the Helena Goldie Hospital in Munda.

My association with the Solomons dates back to my birth there in 1940. From 1938 to 1948, my father worked in the islands, initially for the New Zealand Methodist Missionary Society, when he was director of the Helena Goldie Mission Hospital, based then in Bilua, in Vella, then when we returned as a family shortly before the end of the war in 1944 he worked for the Colonial Service and was responsible for setting up the new Medical Service In the capital, Honiara. During this time we travelled extensively around all the islands on the mission schooner, the "Hygeia" when he visited and treated his widely-scattered patients. (If you look closely at the photo of Hygeia below, probably taken round 1945, you might just be able to identify my father and me in the canoe alongside. This was the only way of going ashore.)

This nautical childhood presumably accounts for my love of sailing, which has been such an important part of my life. One of the intentions of our circumnavigation in my Hygeia, 1998 - 2004, was to deliver medical equipment to the islands. I suspect ours was the only 42 foot yacht in the South Pacific with a colonoscope on board! (In the event we never quite reached the Solomons, but that's another story!)

The Helena Goldie Hospital is the same small, 66-bedded unit that my father ran in the early 1940s. This same hospital is still in existence today, still non-government funded, and still providing a wonderful service to the 26,000 people living on this and surrounding islands in this part of the Solomons. Mie I had the good fortune of spending a day there when we were on the island in 2019, and were amazed by the quality and extent of service they offered, despite finances being extremely tight.

It won't surprise you to hear, though, that the hospital is very much in need of some updated and new equipment. All departments of the hospital could do with upgrading. When we were there, the operating theatre had only one anaesthetic machine, one diathermy machine and not much in the way of monitoring equipment. A relatively small amount of money could make an enormous difference to the conditions in theatre, and allow a wider range of operations to be carried out. Every single penny I raise in sponsorship will go directly to the hospital.