Five times now. Five times I've clipped in — and somehow the reason gets bigger every year.

This April I'm heading to Chile for Hospitality Rides 2027: five days and roughly 460km in the saddle, dropping out of the Andes at the El Yeso Dam (2,630m), winding through the Maipo and Colchagua wine valleys, and finishing where the road runs out on the Pacific coast at Iloca. It's stunning. It's also brutal — Day 5 alone is 119km, and my legs already know what's coming.

But here's what gets me back on the bike. Every pound is split between the Licensed Trade Charity and Only A Pavement Away — two charities that catch the people our industry too often lets slip through: colleagues facing hardship, crisis and homelessness. The people who poured your pint, ran your kitchen, kept the lights on. When they hit the wall, these are the charities that show up.

This year the thirty of us riding are chasing something genuinely audacious — together we're aiming to raise over half a million pounds. That takes real generosity from everyone backing us, and every single donation to my page pushes us closer. Whatever you can give goes straight to people in hospitality who need it most.

Thank you.