Evening fellow Thorpers.

As some of you may or may not know, along with Cycling I watch a lot of football (Bradford City (Insert joke here!)).

As you will all no doubt remember, in 1985, there was a fire at Valley Parade which killed 56 fans.  I was only 3 at the time and didn’t go to the game however, strangely my Grandfather did get to the ground but after feeling unwell, bought a programme and went off home again before kick off.

Following the fire along with the 56 killed (mainly children or ‘older’ fans) there were over 200 people badly injured and transferred to hospitals in the district.

Following the fire, the people of Yorkshire and across the world raised £3.5 million, part of which was used to set up a dedicated burns unit at Bradford university. The unit continues to do incredibly valuable work both treating and researching burns injuries. In order to continue doing this, it needs money as it is partially run via public donations.

25 years on from the fire this May, the Telegraph and Argus and Bradford City are running a campaign to raise £100,000 to ensure the survival of the Burns unit which will otherwise be in real doubt.

Back in October last year I decided in order to raise some money I would think of a cycling challenge.  Once extreme Unicycling had been ruled out I set upon the idea of Cycling from Valley Parade (Bradford City F.C.) to San Remo (in honour of Cavendish’s 1st major one day race win) over 3 weeks in June.  I will be camping as I go.

Planning has been ongoing for quite a while and I have set up [1] a blog to document my progress (don’t worry, there are no pictures of me in the nip (Steve, I emailed you those separately, as requested. You owe me £10 now as you didn’t pay me for the last lot)). There is lots more info in the blog about the plans so far (total distance is roughly 1200 miles and the route includes a stage of this years Tour!).

Please take a look and also take a look at my [2] JustGiving page and if you can, sponsorship would really be much appreciated, any amount however small. Alternatively, any sponsorship can be collected on the club run and I can apply it to the total. It is a very good and local cause.

Thanks for your time.

Ben