As you may know, in the summer of last year Fiona was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since then undergone an extensive course of treatment at The Royal Marsden Hospital, a specialist cancer centre. The great news is that Fiona's treatment has been  successful, due to advances in cancer treatment and the quality of the care offered by the Marsden.

However this is a disease that unfortunately will affect most of us in some way during our lifetime - to put this in perspective, subsequent to the discovery of Fiona's illness,  four work colleagues that I am aware of have also  faced a cancer diagnosis affecting close members of their families, and the Marsden itself treats 40,000 patients a year.

This is why it is important that funds are raised to ensure continual advancements in the treatment of cancer of all types. And that is where you and I come in. At a personal level Fiona and I owe a huge debt to the hospital, and to raise funds for The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign I agreed to participate in a bike ride from London - Paris.

After training hard (about 1360 miles and 84 hours "in the saddle") the main event took place over four days, starting in Crystal Palace park and finishing on Saturday 18th July at the Eiffel Tower. This involved cycling another 305 miles with an additional 24 hours of "chafing". However  the sponsorship raised to date has made all this wortwhile, and any additional donations would help to soothe the soreness still further.