Over 6 days in May, I will be walking the length of the Kennet and Avon Canal - from lock number 1 at Hanham, Bristol to lock number 107 in Reading (87 miles in total) - to raise money for the complementary therapy service at St Peter's Hospice.

St Peter’s Hospice is a much-loved Bristol charity that cares for adults with life-limiting illnesses and aims to improve the quality of their living and dying while also offering care and support to their families and loved ones. It is Bristol's only adult hospice and last year celebrated 35 years of serving the community. The hospice's team of volunteer complementary therapists, together with a paid co-ordinator, offer massage, reflexology and aromatherapy to patients in the day hospice in-patient unit. 

I am a volunteer holistic massage therapist at the hospice and feel incredibly privileged to be part of the amazing work that the hospice and the complementary therapy team does. In my work there I see first hand how hugely beneficial complementary therapies are to patients, providing a precious opportunity to receive loving care through soothing, gentle touch, respite from discomfort, pain and anxiety, and also the chance to share how they are feeling and be listened to. 

I am doing this walk because we currently need funds to enable us to bring two much-needed developments to the service.

The first is to part-fund a training course for our volunteer therapists in the HEARTS process, which is a technique for supporting people to relax and find a sense of well-being using gentle touch, empathy, aromas, textures and sounds. This will expand what we can currently offer our patients and also better enable us to support the most frail and unwell of our patients for whom massage and reflexology may no longer be appropriate.

The second is to buy an electronic massage couch for our day hospice treatment room to help make our patients, many of whom have restricted mobility, as comfortable and relaxed as possible while they receive their treatments. 

I'd really love to raise enough money from my walk to make both these developments possible and know they will make a big difference to  our patients. Thank you so much for your support.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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.