Last month PACT dad Chris Blackabee completed a bicycle ride from London Kings Cross to Sheffield and here is his story of the trip in his own words.
“On 25 April I took the train to London with 4 other cycling friends to complete the ride back up to South Yorkshire to raise money for PACT. I completed this bike ride on a tandem with my front rider Graham as I am totally blind. We managed to complete the ride over 3 days and cycled a total of 244 miles.
Day one consisted of cycling from central London to Cambridge where we stayed over night and we did 66 miles that day. We were fortunate that we managed to keep away from busy roads and we cycled most of the day on tracks and quite roads in the main which made for a very pleasant and enjoyable ride. Our support driver Jane also joined us in Cambridge and stayed with us for the rest of the cycle and her work was invaluable.
Day two was very flat and again our map reader John did a brilliant job to keep us away from heavy traffic. We cycled 88 miles and we stayed our second night in Boston in Lincs.
Day three was a much tougher day as it was much more hilly, very hot and we met met much more traffic on the roads. My good friend Lloyd and one of my many running guides rushed me to the bakery at lunch time and we fuelled up on what ever we could get our hands on. This helped hugely. We cycled 100 miles on day three as some of the team had personal ambitions to do 100 miles in a day on a bike. Alan kept us all going too with his hugely funny jokes and wit.
I owe so many thanks to so many people for making this event such a success but myself and the rest of the team would like to thank everyone who gave so kindly to what is an amazing charity. We raised around £1,700 and we still have some money coming in.
I will never ever forget the help and support that PACT dedicated staff gave to my family and myself when times were so tough with my daughter’s eye cancer and in fact still support us to this very day in so many ways.
Keep up the amazing work PACT in supporting families, we love each and everyone of you.”
If you haven’t met Chris then you can hear from him in the PACT film by the way!