Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

I had a 'big birthday' earlier this year - 60 since you ask - and I wanted to do something really special to celebrate it. I've been a big fan of cycle road racing for many years and when I read about this cycling holiday, it seemed to be the perfect way to celebrate it.

It took place at the end of June and was a six-day ride through the Alps that cycled over some of the most testing Tour de France climbs, finishing on the summit of Alpe D'Huez, the most famous of them all! With a distance of around 500km and thousands of metres of ascent and descent, I knew that it wasn't going to be easy.

Apart from the ambition to succeed, what also drove me on me was that I was raising much needed funds to help a small charity, Caring Matters Now, fund vital research into Congenital Melanocytic Naevus (CMN), a rare condition that affects children from birth and stays with them for life! My 2 year old Grandson, Max, has CMN and helping children like him was all the incentive I needed.

This wasn't a charity ride in the normal sense, it was a holiday - 'some holiday', you might say - that I paid to go on and then chose chose to turn into a sponsored ride so that I could help raise funds for CMN. This means that every penny you donate will go to the Caring Matters Now Charity.

I trained hard for it and as I live in North Derbyshire, there was little problem in finding hills to ride. The difference was that real thing involved climbs of around 25km, rather than the shorter, steeper climbs I was used to riding locally. As it turned out, the hills were long and sustained with some amazing views from the switchback corners, with some exciting and very fast descents. 

So please be generous and make a donation to help Caring Matters Now and the very small, specialist research team they fund at Great Ormond Street Hospital to make life better for all those children, like my little Grandson, who suffer with this unpleasant condition. You can find out more on the Caring Matters Now website.

Thanks so much for your generosity. You can read the full story of how I got on at my blog, which is at http://geoffsite.wordpress.com/

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity. Thank you.