Trans Rockies Challenge for Milo – Supporting The Children’s Trust Tadworth

GEW is to sponsor Antony Gray in the Trans Rockies Challenge for Milo, in support of the Children’s Trust Tadworth.

The seven day challenge will start on Thursday 9th August 2007 so there is still time to make a donation or to sponsor Antony yourself. The links shown below give further information about the event and how to contribute.

The following text has been extracted from Antony’s letter to GEW:

Milo’s story (by Antony Gray): Our 6 year old son ‘Milo’ sadly died very unexpectedly on the 2nd December 2005 from a very rare form of brain aneurysm. He was a fun loving, caring and very thoughtful little boy and we as a family are still trying to come to terms with what happened. As a result we have been trying to help other families and children in similar circumstances in raising money for the charity below. Please dig deep and help us to help them that are unable to help themselves.

The cause: The Children’s Trust Tadworth – An amazing hospital that helps with the rehabilitation of children with all manor of serious brain injuries be it from birth, a stroke or a road traffic accident. My aim is to raise funds for vital refurbishment work and specialist equipment that they so desperately need. All donations and sponsorships will be given to ‘The Children’s Trust’ in Tadworth, Surrey, (Registered Charity No, 288018) in the memory of our little son ‘Milo’. The Trust have kindly allowed a room to be named in his memory.

The Challenge: Well it’s not just a ride in the park. Oh, well yes it is actually, but this park is in British Colombia, Canada and it is a staggering 364,764 square miles. The gruelling seven day challenge, which takes place between the 12 and 18 August this year, covers over 600Km of riding with and amazing 37,000 feet of climbing, that’s equivalent to climbing up Mount Everest (29,050 ft) and a quite a bit more, so hopefully there will be lots of down hill sections as well. All of it is at an altitude of over 9,000 ft . My team-mate and I will be riding from 7am to 6pm most days and camping out in the wilderness at night. It is called ‘The Transrockies Challenge’ and is claimed to be one of the toughest mountain bike races on the planet.

So, please get your cheque book and pen out quickly and write the largest one you can afford and pop it in the post to me. It means so much to myself, Natalie and Olivia to help give some support to families with children that have these terrible disabilities. Please make the cheques out to ‘Milo Gray’ as we are collecting all the moneys in his account and we will make the presentation of the collected donations to the Trust later this year. We also have set up a BLOG to let you see how the training is going and to keep you informed of events and activities the web address is www.milogray.com (have a look!) We also have a JUST GIVING page at www.justgiving.com/milogray where you can pay by credit card.

Thank you ever so much! Take care now. Please help us to help them.

Antony Gray

Antony… training hard!

UPDATE: 23rd August 2007 We Made it (Antony Gray).

What a brilliant experience with just over 35 hours in the saddle a large tub of butt cream, 552km and nearly 12,000 meters of serious uphill climbing – we came 26th in our category out of 83 that started. We are very pleased with that result. We actually came 2nd from the teams from the UK in our class 80+ and overall 7th from all the teams from the UK in all categories. Not bad for a couple of old gits. Brian and I worked extremely well together as a team each having good and bad days. Luckily, neither of us had any serious crashes apart from a small fall on the rocks for Brian and a slight misjudge of a sharp corner for me we both came through smiling. How fantastic it was to see Natalie and Olivia at the finish line. How good that cold beer tasted as well. I will put some more info and photos up over the next few days. I just want to let you all know we were back safe and sound.
Funds raised so far: £24,020.00

To donate, go to www.justgiving.com/milogray where you can pay by credit card.