About me

Hi, I’m Derek, I’ve just turned 70 and been visually impaired all my life.  Despite my visual impairment I have had a full and fulfilling life. I passionately believe that we all take from society and those of us, who can, should give something back.  This can take many forms: for me this has been to give time and money to an organisation – the Friends of Moorfields Eye Hospital  - that supports the patients who are going through a nerve-racking experience in losing their vision. I also support other organisations.

My Challenge

For this year my Challenge during lockdown is to do a virtual walk of route 66 – a distance of 3,669.8 kilometres in 350 days.   That is an average of 10.47K per day (6.54miles).  At the time of writing I
have been walking for 104 days and have covered 1260.3 Kilometres (an average of 12.11 Kilometres per day) so I am well ahead of schedule.

The money I want to raise will benefit those who are losing their
sight: Whilst going through this it is important that they receive as much information as possible to help them understand what is happening, the possible treatments and who they can turn to for support. To this end the Friends of Moorfields has a two prong approach. We provide the health information hub in the main hospital to which any patient may come seeking information. The hub is managed by a full-time member of staff supported by a number of volunteers and pre - Covid saw about 50 patients per day. The Friends have also sponsored a number of information videos for patients talking about such things as eye drops, anaesthetics and some visual disorder.  Our latest video to be released shortly talks about corneal transplants.

If you want to follow my progress along route 66 please
contact me at Myfomchallenge@yahoo.com

I am aiming to produce a short monthly progress report on
where I have been, how far I have travelled and what still remains to be achieved.