Every year in the UK 90,000 babies are cared for in neonatal units. This means that 1 in 7 babies are admitted to a neonatal unit. These numbers include premature and full-term babies. The birth of a child is one of the most special moments of a parent’s life, but it can also be one of the most worrying times when your baby needs critical lifesaving care.

As some of you may know, my twins were born 10 weeks premature and would not have survived without the specialist neonatal care they received. They each suffered several serious setbacks, including brain haemorrhage, pneumothorax, and several other issues that they were only able to survive with the outstanding care provided to them during the first 10 weeks of their life in neonatal care. It was an extremely challenging time, and one that would have been made easier with some of the fantastic support now offered to families by charities such as this.

This is why this year as a group we are going to help raise funds for the Simpsons Special Care Babies charity in Scotland, a charity that has directly helped some of our riders through the most challenging of times. The purpose of the charity is to ensure that all babies admitted to the Simpsons Neonatal unit continue to receive the best possible care under the expertise of the medical staff. Not only do they support babies who require special care, but they provide support to parent well-being through a ‘family-centred-care' unit. By supporting the charity through our fundraising activity, we will support the unit in being able to acquire life saving medical equipment such as video laryngoscopes which significantly improve the success rate of intubation of small babies.

Therefore this year to raise funds, our C2C team will take on the challenge of cycling from Dumbarton on the West Coast of Scotland, to Aberfeldy, onwards to Granton-on-Spey and finishing in Aberdeen on the East Coast of Scotland, a total distance of 234 miles and 4,816m of elevation, including cycling over the Lecht ski slope.

We would appreciate any donation to our cause and hope that together we can raise important funding to support Simpsons Special Care Babies.

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