Hi, myself Dave Nixon and my good friend Steve Penny are about to set off on a road trip to Romania and back, travelling through eight or nine different countries and covering somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 miles.

Many of you know that we have both lost our wives to dementia. Steve’s wife, Wendy, passed away at the age of 70 two and a half years ago, and my wife, Mandy, passed away at the age of 66 one and a half years ago. Dementia Oxfordshire provided tremendous support to both our wives and to us throughout the difficult journey of living with this cruel disease for 7 years.

Our local pub, The Horse Shoe - “The Shoes” - suggested that we use this trip to raise some much-needed funds for Dementia Oxfordshire. We thought it was a wonderful idea and hope that, in some small way, we can give something back to a charity that gave us so much.

If you are able to make a donation, no matter how small, it will be hugely appreciated and will help support people and families who are living with dementia today.

From both Steve and I, thank you for your kindness, generosity and support.

For those of you who enjoy a motoring adventure, we’ll be making the journey in my 1997 Jaguar XK8. She has a normally aspirated 4.0-litre V8 engine and has covered just over 57,000 miles, with 18,000 of those during the nine years I’ve owned her, and I’ve loved every mile! She has already completed trouble-free tours of 5 days in the Yorkshire Dales and a ten-day trip through the Picos Mountains in northern Spain, so she’s already proved herself to be a wonderful touring car. Now it’s time for her biggest adventure yet!

We leave on 27th July and hope to return around 18th August. We’ll be posting regular updates, photos and stories on Facebook and WhatsApp along the way, so we hope you’ll enjoy following our adventure.

Thank you once again for your support—it really does mean a great deal to both of us.

Dave & Steve