A CYCLIST is gearing up ready to take on a mammoth four-day challenge to mark 35 years of charity bike rides.
Nick Hanson will be heading to Cumbria – where his mum lived with vascular dementia in a care home until she died in December 2022 – to start his epic journey to Blythe Rose care home in Solihull where his father-in-law currently lives with advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
Nick will set off on his 225-mile Care Home to Care Home Ride from Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria on June 28 in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society..
He will then make his way through Cheshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and into the West Midlands – with the aim of clocking up 50 to 60 miles a day.
He hopes to raise £2,250 for the charity which provides support for dementia patients and their loved ones as well as funding research into the disease.
The stalwart charity cyclist said: “Our families have been affected enormously by dementia, so the Alzheimer’s Society seemed a very appropriate charity to raise funds for.
“A good friend David Rees-Jones works locally for the charity and was hugely supportive when Julia’s father Mike was diagnosed.
“To mark 35 years since my first major charity bike ride and five years since my last, it seemed like the appropriate opportunity to pedal to raise funds once more.”
The 62-year-old took on his first charity bike ride was in September 1989 when I cycled in a team of four from Land’s End to John O’Groats in eight days for the Multiple Sclerosis, as one member of the team had been previously diagnosed.
On the 30th anniversary of that ride in September 2019 and in memory of another member of the team who had tragically taken his own life, Nick raised funds for Solihull Mind by completing a 12-hour Dawn till Dusk ride around the Tudor Grange Park wheeled circuit.
Nick has also completed a Coast to Coast Bike Ride in 2001 – a ride of 126 miles from Morecambe to Scarborough in one day.
His fundraising efforts haven’t been limited to cycling over the years in 2004 he took on the London Marathon in aid of Edward’s Trust, which supports bereaved families in Birmingham, and in 2014 he ran the Manchester Marathon for the Multiple Myeloma charity – in honour of his father who died of the disease.
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