With the Tamara Trail done and dusted it’s time for me to move onto my individual challenge for 2024! I am, once again, going to challenge myself to do the Jersey Island Walk which is, for those of you that don’t know, a 48.1mile hike around the beautiful island of Jersey. The walk starts at Elizabeth Port at 3:00am on Saturday 15th June and has to be completed that day! It’s a very demanding and challenging adventure that does push you to the limits and at 68 years of age I am still curious to find out what my limits are, so this is what I am going to do.

Over the last couple of year’s a number of friends have contracted different types of cancer that has required treatment and the Sunrise Centre (which is based at the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske) has provided those different types of treatment to help these individuals. Sadly, a couple of these people, namely Treve Dunstan (Life Member and former chairman at Redruth RFC) and Chris Dunn (St Ives RFC), are no longer with us BUT a good friend and ex playing colleague Ian Deacon (St Ives RFC) and long standing volunteer at Redruth RFC (Mel Woodley) are currently undergoing treatment for their forms of this horrible disease. I originally thought of raising money for Cancer Research but thought about that and decided to do something more local so have decided to raise money for the Sunrise Centre. I am hoping that the St Ives RFC family will support this challenge as I am the Redruth RFC faithful. I would value your contributions very much. It’s a very worthwhile cause and with statistics saying that 1 out of 2 people will contract the Big C at some point in their life its very important that facilities like the Sunrise Centre are supported.

Here is a short summary of the centre and what they do to help people:-

The Sunrise Centre is the oncology (cancer) centre covering the whole of Cornwall. It is based at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro and opened in 2002. Facilities include an outpatient unit with eight clinical rooms. There are three modern radiotherapy machines that are able to give radiotherapy to different depths and that can be accurately shaped using lead leaves (reducing the risk of side effects). The Sunrise Centre has its own CT Scanner which is used to plan radiotherapy treatments accurately, as well as offices and meeting rooms. The nearby Headland Unit is a chemotherapy suite (where outpatients chemotherapy is given) and where some clinical procedures are performed. Please give generously to this very worthwhile cause.