~*TOUR DA ENGLAND*~

2015 is going to be a big year for many people. You may be getting married, having a baby, buying a house or following a dream. For Eric Fulham and Hannah Dawson 2015 is the year they embark on a 200 mile bike ride to raise important funds for the charity CLIC Sargent.

CLIC Sargent (Cancer and Leukaemia in Childhood) help young people and their families deal with the magnitude of issues presented when a young person is diagnosed with Cancer or Leukaemia. They are guided by four key aims

• To reduce the practical and financial impact of cancer treatment on a child, or young person, and their family
• To support the emotional wellbeing and resilience of children, young people and their families
• To maximise the time that children and young people can spend safely at home during treatment
• To maximise children and young people’s potential by enabling them to access education, training and employment opportunities.

Everything you need to know about this wonderful charity can be found here on their website Eric and Hannah work for J D Wetherspoon who have been supporting CLIC since 2002. Over the past 13 years they have raised 10 million pounds for the charity, have recently pledged to keep supporting them for a further 5 years and aim to raise 1 million pounds a year for them. You can read the company’s celebration of reaching this milestone here JD Wetherspoons have bars all over the UK, Eric and Hannah work in The Squire Knott in Oldham just outside of Manchester. After knowing each other for only a year they have decided to undertake this monumental challenge to raise money for the very worthy cause. I spoke to them both to see how they are feeling about this upcoming grueling task they have set themselves.

1) What made you guys want to cycle from Manchester to London? Stupidity! No seriously, we wanted to do something big to help. Head office is in Watford and we thought it would be a great idea to go from our front door to theirs. 2) What sort of things have your pub done in the past to raise money for CLIC? We’ve done raffles, football cards, none uniform days and fancy dress days. We’ve taken part in Kick for CLIC which is a five-a-side football tournament held by Weatherspoons as well as a charity darts competition held by the company too. 3) You say you want to cover the 200 mile distance in three days, what made you choose this time frame? Neither of us are athletes so we wanted to give ourselves enough time to make people impressed and want to sponsor us without actually dying at the end of it. 4) How’s the training going? We won’t lie, it’s hard, but we are being sensible about it and increasing our intensity gradually in order to build up strength and stamina. We’ve also had one of our customers donate 2 bike helmets and 100 glucose gel packs to help out too.   Eric and Hannah embark on their Tour Da England on the 18^th of July; their Just Giving page can be found here The North are heading South and they need you to CLIC and support. It’s not only money they are currently trying to raise, if you own or work for a sports shop/company and think you could help by donating some of the equipment they will need on their journey, please get in touch with Eric by the following email address ericfulham@gmail.com Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post; you can keep up with Eric and Hannah's training and their quest on their Facebook Page. To quote a well known supermarket “Every penny helps” and Eric and Hannah are after pennies to raise pounds. Lisa Fulham who has organized this blog tour is still looking for sign-ups for June and July, if you have a blog or Facebook page you would like to support this cause with please fill in the sign-up sheet