Just over a year ago my greatest friend asked me to join him on a cycle ride from Milan to Venice. He had not been well and the hope was that by training and completing this ride it might help make him better again. Tragically Simon died in December. For many reasons I have decided to make this journey. As you might imagine travelling has not been easy this year; for obvious reasons the company organising the event has cancelled twice and has recently postponed again but I remain determined to try and get this done and so around the 16th October I will try and cycle the approx 300km journey alone from Milan to Venice hopefully in two days as we had intended. Simon had wanted us to raise money for a charity he was keen to support, James' Place Charity. James' Place Charity helps raise awareness of anxiety, depression and suicide amongst young people and to tackle the statistic that suicide is the second largest cause of death amongst young men in the UK

I appreciate that this year, there have been many pressures for everyone and that these are set to continue, but I would be incredibly grateful if you were able to support me in this venture and make a donation to James' Place to help them in the important work they do via this JustGiving page.

Thank you for your kindness and hopefully in about a month's time I will send you a photograph from a possibly rather empty St. Mark's Square of the journey completed. If that is thwarted I intend to ride from London to Lincoln and back; a little further but a little flatter and you may have put up with a picture of Trafalgar Square instead!