Hi everyone,

My name is Chris Hughes. I have decided to walk around 130 miles, from my house in Cardiff to my parents' house in Farnham, Surrey to raise money for Parkinson's UK.

Parkinson's is a condition that my dad, David, was diagnosed with in 2016. At the time I was still living with my parents and my sister. Since then, my sister has moved to France and got married, and I moved to Cardiff and bought a house. In the first two years after I moved away, I made an effort to visit my parents as often as I could, to show I would always be there, and that I was only a couple of hours away. Then we had the outbreak of Covid-19, and those trips were no longer possible for long periods. This has led to my parents, and in particular my mum, feeling very isolated. Although there have been opportunities for me to visit my parents between lockdowns, it has been a lot more difficult for us to see my sister. She lives in France and has just had her first child, but current restrictions make it very difficult for us to see each other. At this time, charities such as Parkinson's UK have also struggled with fundraising due to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, I have spent the past year eating and drinking too much, and not doing enough exercise, and my increasingly tight work clothes are suggesting I need to try and rectify this.

This brings me back to my walk. I plan to walk from Cardiff to Farnham. This is approximately 130 miles, and will take me five days. I will be doing this between 25th and 29th July 2021, stopping overnight in Chepstow, Chippenham, Marlborough and Kingsclere.

I want to do this for a number of reasons:

1) To improve my own mental and physical health.

2) To support a charity doing great work to support people, like my father, suffering with Parkinson's disease.

3) To show my parents, that despite all the difficulties of the last few years, I am still within walking distance... sort of.

Please feel free to ask me any questions about my challenge, please donate if you can and please feel free to share my story. Any donations would go to a very worthy cause.