Thank you for taking the time to read this. Dad (AKA Kit, or "the fossil") was just brilliant, brave and clever and although he put up a fiercesome fight for more than 10 years (Musgrove called him "their miracle") he died at just 66 from an incredibly rare form of leukaemia, prolymphocytic or PLL - that makes up less than 1% of chronic leukaemias.

He was a master at telling really bad jokes, drinking red wine and beer and living. Everyone who worked with, played cricket, golf or squash were part of his extended family and he is greatly missed.

He helped and encouraged so many people in sport and work and life and now we want to remember him so ...

The Challenge

To celebrate his life we (me, my trusty hound and friends when they can) are walking 630 miles "ish". How hard can that be you say! Well I am scared of heights - sick, dizzy, wobbly legs, drawn to the edge kind of scared - and am walking the South West Coast Path which is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest four times (115,000 feet of ascent and descent including up/down 30,000 steps). Naively I hadn't appreciated how close to the edge you have to walk at times. I can tell you after many miles the fear hasn't gone away and every single step has been challenging but I think dad would approve - he never liked to do things the easy way.

Can you help us raise funds for these vital services?

The team at Ward Nine at Musgrove Park Hospital cared for Dad (and us) in the 10 years that he was a regular visitor with kindness and true compassion that we will never forget. Your support will enable the staff make life easier for all the amazing people that spend time in their care.

Blood Cancer is the fifth most common cancer but half of UK adults can't name one symptom (dad went to the doctor as he had been hit by a cricket ball, but in reality his spleen was enlarged). We all need to raise its profile to help reduce the number of deaths, as 15,000 people in the UK still die of blood cancer every year. Funds that we raise will be spent on life saving research by Blood Cancer UK to help people today.

What we have done so far?

Some people do the coast path in 35 days, we are not those people. We started from Minehead in Somerset on 13 May 2018 and have taken 121 days to walk 688.65 miles in 332.85 hours climbing 76,733.80m with an average speed of 2.07 miles per hour (which I think is quite fast!). It is only supposed to be 630 miles in total so not sure where we have gone wrong! According to our plans should be about 9 miles left to go.

We have raised £1934.80 so far but still want to raise another £630 (split between Love Musgrove and Blood Cancer UK) to mark the end of our challenge before, what would have been, Dad's 80th birthday on 1 November.

How will your money help?

Blood Cancer UK

• £5 could enable us to study blood cancer cells and learn more about how they work by paying toward a special pipette for the sterile handling of cells in the lab.

• £10 could pay for one hour’s use of a flow cytometer. This would help our researchers to find and analyse the different type of cells in a sample.

• £25 could support one of our ground-breaking early-phase clinical trials by paying to analyse the DNA of a patient – which in turn can help us to develop new, better treatments.

• £100 could support a PhD student for one day to conduct vital research into blood cancers. Without PhD students, we wouldn’t be able to sustain the UK’s world-leading blood cancer research in the future – which we need to keep beating blood cancer.

• £100 could help researchers count and analyse thousands of blood cells a second.

Ward nine at Musgrove Park Hospital

Apollo high back drop arm patient chair £238.00

Overbed tables £323.68

Privacy curtain screen £628.37

Gola Reception chair £178.00

Patient Boston reclining chair £1547.21

Patient Colorado electric reclining chair £1989.00

Thank you

Please could you help us by donating anything you can.

Thank you.