My colleague, James Smith and I are taking part in the two ball rally where we will be driving a £600 Ford Ka from London to Lisbon in April 2025. The route will take us through France, Spain and into Portugal on A roads, B roads and just about roads and is going to take us 5 days. The car is a Ford Ka, now referred to as UlriKa. We have got a few months to get UlriKa prepped, polished and ready for a journey that has a good chance of breaking her, or us. Neither of us are designed for fitting in or driving a small car and neither of us are mechanics, so this is not going to be a leisurely drive in the countryside.

We are doing this to raise money for COPS the Care of Police Survivors charity who do incredible things for the families of fallen officers. As serving Met Officers of several years each, we both have a list of colleagues and friends we have lost along the way and each and everyone of them will be forefront in our minds when we embark on this trip.

Please give whatever you can, even if you don’t know us, £1 is more than we started with and every penny we make will be going to make a truly awful situation that little bit better for members of the Police family. We are planning on making some videos along the way so keep your eyes peeled for that too.

COPS provides peer support opportunities and access to counselling services to help surviving family members (‘survivors’) rebuild their shattered lives.

"Your loss is a part of who you are but COPS helps you realise that it doesn’t define you. We are all one big family."

Since its foundation in 2003, COPS has helped hundreds of police families devastated by the loss of a loved one who died on duty.