Summer Meeting sponsored bikes rides

This year's Summer Scientific Meeting will be taking place in Bournemouth, a good distance from both Oxford and Essex where two of our members below will be seizing the opportunity for a charity bike ride! Sarah Tucker will be cycling in from Oxford for BFIRST and Mat Griffiths will be joining his colleagues Louise Quinn, Carol Palmer and Andrew Wightman in cycling from Broomfield Hospital in Essex down to Bournemouth. Find out more about their plans below and please consider donating.


Sarah Tucker - BFIRST
Bournemouth is located around 100 miles from Oxford where BFIRST committee member Sarah Tucker is based – a nice round figure. For some reason this made her consider “doing something crazy” – Why not cycle there? So she is! in support of BFIRST. It’s going to be quite a challenge. Sarah has never cycled more than 56 miles in a day before and although she cycles to work regularly on flat roads, the journey to Bournemouth is hilly and she has just one day to complete it in.

As a keen cyclist in rural Essex I have enjoyed events such as the London to Southend, Prudential Ride London 100 and the bonkers overnight Dunwich Dynamo. Fund-raising alongside these and other cycle events has helped to raise several thousand pounds for the breast reconstruction, lymphoedema and cleft charities at Broomfield Hospital. 

Recently, having discovered that a number of my patients are also out and about on two wheels we decided to join forces and plan a sponsored ride in aid of our Breast Reconstruction Awareness Charity. As such on June  26th/27th 2019 we plan to cycle from Chelmsford to the summer meeting for plastic surgery in the UK (BAPRAS) to Bournemouth, around 182 miles, over two days. The riders will be Louise Quinn, Carol Palmer (both linked below) plus Andrew Wightman and myself. 

Day 1
Leaving bright and early on the Wednesday we will head south to Tilbury and cross the Thames with the ferry into Gravesend. From there we plan to continue via one of our sister plastic surgery units in East Grinstead known as the Queen Victoria Hospital before finishing up in Emsworth, Hampshire for our overnight stop after around 120 miles. 

Day 2
This will be a shorter day, on tired legs, and we will also stop at another plastic surgery unit the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth for morning tea followed by a course around Southampton and through the New Forest to Bournemouth for a rendezvous with colleagues at the summer meeting.  

By doing this we hope to support the role of plastic reconstructive surgery in the breast cancer journey as recently funding cuts in the region have impacted on delayed breast reconstruction in the Essex area. Donate here!