Close friends that met through our mutual love for biking (and wine) we have decided to team together to help raise money for two amazing charities - Bliss and Myeloma UK.

After spending a lot of time together, we weirdly had never spoke about the desire of wanting to endeavour the same challenge until recently and have now joined forces (which is probably safer if you know us both) so we can fulfil our dream together.

Sophie is raising money for Bliss charity. Sophie spent 3 weeks in NICU living on the baby intensive care ward at Airedale Hospital in August 2019 after her two identical twins were born 6 weeks prematurely and after a few complications at birth. Honey and Ivy were diagnosed with Respiratory Distress Syndrome and spent their first few weeks of life on ventilators and getting better under the walking NHS angels of Airedale. Luckily they have made a full recovery now but Sophie and Sam are forever in debt to the doctors and nurses which saved their babies lives. Sophie and Sam got to take Honey and Ivy home, sadly many babies don't get to come home but with your donations you will help to care for sick and premature babies of which every 5 minutes, a baby is admitted to neonatal care in the UK. Bliss is the leading UK charity for babies born premature or sick. They rely on donations to fund their work, and without our help they won't be able to reach the 100,000 babies needing neonatal care each year.

Kate is going to be raising money for her - Myeloma UK. Blood cancer has taken its toll on her and her family for the last 5 years. In 2016, Kate was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, after a 12 month battle with chemotherapy as her weapon of choice she was placed in remission in April 2017. Sadly just 4 weeks later, Julia, Kate's Mum was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a rare blood cancer, around 5,700 people are diagnosed each year. Unfortunately whilst treatment can be effective at relieving symptoms, managing complications and prolonging life, Myeloma is currently an incurable (terminal) cancer and it's with a heavy heart to say on 27th January 2021 Kate lost her mum to this terrible disease.

So what are we doing?

Riding over 200 miles across 7 days of traversing Scotland's legendary highlands from Aberdeen in the east to Ardnamurchan in the west, or maybe the other way round (yet to be decided). The pioneering route covers nearly 400km and an awesome 7200m of ascent and descent. This ride is classed as the 'Ultimate Coast to Coast mountain bike ride in the UK' and we're going to take in some of the best trails in Scotland. We will enjoy riding down Mount Keen, the most easterly Munro, through wild heather-clad landscapes on natural singletrack in one of our favourite places - The Cairngorms...and to make this even harder we are going to challenge ourselves by riding this unsupported, except for our beloved bikes and some Scottish Whisky along the way...

This is really personal for both of us, but together we are going to raise money to help fight cancer and look after sick and premature babies.

We're both absolutely useless at navigation and bike mechanics and despite both been experienced riders we have never done any bikepacking. This is going to be a huge challenge for both of us, but we couldn't do it without the help of you.

We're going to keep you all up to date on our training, planning and the main challenge itself and finally we have now made a Team on Just Giving which enables us to raise more money for these amazing charities by working together but we would like to keep funds as equal as possible.

Thanks so much.

#teamthelostgirls