On Saturday 2nd May 2026 a group of us will be walking 32 miles from Gloucester Royal Hospital to Southmead Hospital in Bristol. Why you may ask?

On Monday 21st April 2025 my daughter Saskia, aged just 22 and incredibly fit and healthy suffered a devastating Haemorrhagic Stroke in front of us whilst visiting family.

After rushing her to Gloucester Royal Hospital, she was then transferred by ambulance to Southmead Hospital in Bristol - spending several days in the ICU before being moved to the Neorology ward. The bleed on her brain was caused by an Arteriorvenous Malformation (AVM), rupturing, a rare condition she was born with that until that point we were unaware she had.

After the rupture it caused an instant loss of speech known as Apraxia and left a large clot in her brain. On the 2nd May she underwent a 7.5 hour craniotomy to remove the AVM and clot from her brain. The operation was successful and in the following days her speech returned.

She’s still recovering but has made fantastic progress and a recent cerebral angiogram showed that the AVM was totally removed. We had been warned that it could return but she’s been told that they’ll do an MRI in 3 years time just to check everything is still as it should be.

As a family we want to help to raise awareness over the key differences in a Haemorrhagic Stroke to those in a Ischemic Stroke and also the condition that caused the rupture.

We also want to fund further research into Strokes and we have chosen the following charity - the Billie Elizabeth Wood Trust (BEWT) to donate everything we can.

Billie sadly passed away in May 2020 aged just 25 from a similar stroke to Saskia. I know her family and they’ve helped fund research through BEWT with all of the fundraising going directly to Southmead where sadly Billie lost her battle. The research team there is led by Saskia’s Neurosurgeon Mario Teo, so this was an easy decision for us. The staff at Southmead genuinely restored not just my faith in the NHS but in humanity, so many people doing wonderful work and always with a smile, whilst treating some of the most serious of cases, I will forever be in their debt.

We will be taking a route along the A38, with a couple of support cars to assist us with drinks, snacks and plasters for the almost certain blisters. It will be a year to the day since Saskia’s surgery, safe to say this will be the toughest physical challenge I’ll have ever undertaken, which seems appropriate given everything Saskia has been through.

Please donate what you can to help fund vital research.