In June, to celebrate my Mum’s 60th, my family took on a challenge unlike anything we’ve ever done before. My Mum, my sister and I cycled from London to Paris in a little peloton of three, with my Dad as our support driver/lunch provider/hotel porter.

We took on the 250 miles over 5 days, some longer than others – the longest was over 70 miles and the shortest (the last) under 30 miles. We stayed in some lovely places along the route and surprised ourselves at how much we enjoyed the experience – our legs coped so well with all the hills (there were LOTS!!) and I don’t think we felt tired once!

There is nothing like the feeling of cycling alongside fields of poppies and vast open spaces to clear the head and put lots of things into perspective. In my case, I’d been head down and full steam ahead in a pretty stressful project at work and it was such a lovely feeling to down tools and just be free even if just for a few days.

Time spent with family is never a waste, we enjoyed being in each others company – a rarity these days with small children around – and the added benefit of doing all of this for charity was not lost on us – we are incredibly fortunate to have our health and the ability to undertake such a mammoth task, so any difficult hills along the way were met with determination and grit (and lots of pedalling!)

We raised over £3,700 for the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation in honour of my cousin Mark who has had a Liver disease since birth and received a donor liver four years ago. I was invited to speak on Radio Oxford before and during the journey, which was a lovely thing to do to be able to raise awareness of this charity.

Here are some photos from our journey: