I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer late last year and whilst going through six cycles of chemotherapy starting in December I decided that I needed a challenge to look forward to. I contacted Male Uprising Guernsey, one of whose goals is to raise awareness of prostate cancer and the need to get checked out regularly, to ask if I could help them in this goal and to see if there was any project I could raise funds for. I am looking to raise £20,000 to complete the purchase of specialist equipment to perform Template Prostatic Biopsies on Guernsey. In certain medical circumstances these are currently carried out in Southampton with a waiting list of about five months which I passionately believe is unacceptable. 

As an excuse to raise the funds this August I will cycle 997 miles from Dover to Cape Wrath in Scotland. The ‘corner to corner’ route will take me 14 days of riding around eight hours a day to complete and is considered to be challenging, even for the healthiest of riders. I have now finished a gruelling course of six chemotherapy cycles and am now back in the saddle and training hard.

I am no stranger to physical challenges and at the age of 20 I won two international gold medals for lightweight rowing. In 2012 I set myself a rowing challenge and completed almost 2.4 million metres on a Concept-2, rowing an average of two half marathons each week for a year.

My love of sport and being active did not diminish and to celebrate my 60^th birthday I decided to cycle the Land’s End to John O’Groats route.

It was on this ride that I experienced the symptoms that prompted me to visit the GP on my return. A diagnosis of incurable prostate cancer followed.

I have never suffered with anything worse than “man flu” and have always been open and confident in talking about my health. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I hope you will be able to sponsor me and join MUG in their work to raise awareness of this disease and support those men who, like me, have been diagnosed with cancer.