Move It

Friday 12 April 2024

With just two days to go now before I set off on my LETJOG E2W trek across the British Isles, I have some exciting news! As I said in my last post I have been in discussion with Parkinson’s UK, who are now supporting me on this walk and for whom I am hoping to raise some awareness and some funds – specifically towards their medical research into the causes, relief and a potential cure of Parkinson’s disease. I hope soon to have some further details from Parkinson’s UK on the specific research initiatives to share here, but in the meantime I have today set up a JustGiving fundraising page, and this can be accessed at any time through the link on my Home page (via the above HOME tab) or by clicking on the following button:

Many of you will recall that Parkinson’s UK were the charity that my friend Rob Stubbs and I supported on our Coast to Coast (C2C) walk in 2022, as well as being one of the chosen charities on my Land’s End to John O’Groats ‘LETJOG 2021’ walk, and also on our Scottish 500 ‘Ride & Stride’ (R&S) challenge in September 2022. Details of all of these trips can be found on the tabs above. Well, it seems a lot to ask again so soon for still more contributions, but my invitation to anyone reading this Blog is to support the work of Parkinson’s UK by following and enjoying this daily Blog as I make my way across the country. It goes without saying that if anyone is happy to contribute then I know that Parkinson’s UK would be most grateful, and you can be assured that they will use any funds to good effect in their research.

As for the charity itself, Parkinson’s UK have had a busy week. Yesterday, 11 April was World Parkinson’s Day, and you may have seen some coverage on the national news channels. In particular a ‘Parky Charter’ was delivered to 10 Downing Street by the ‘Movers & Shakers’, a group of well-known Parkinson’s sufferers that includes broadcasters Jeremy Paxman, Mark Mardell and Rory Cellan-Jones, who, along with others, host the ‘Movers & Shakers’ podcast. The Charter is a series of five key recommendations on improvements as to how we as a society address the disease, a list that the Prime Minister has vowed to give the ‘attention it deserves’. For those interested please see the following link:

And the link for the Parkinson’s UK charity itself is:

My Blog song-title heading today, ‘Move It’, serves well both as a motivational message to myself as I prepare to leave my desk for a few weeks to ‘hit the trail’, and also as an echo of the appeal from Parkinson’s UK for more awareness of the challenges of living with Parkinson’s disease and the changes in attitudes required of society in recognising the needs of sufferers. ‘Move It’, the song, was of course a 1958 hit for the then 17-year old rebellious rock and roller Cliff Richard, backed by his group The Drifters (later to become The Shadows), and it is reckoned by many to be Britain’s first authentic rock and roll song. Along with his career on screen, Richard has long-since adopted a more middle-of-the-road image: he is still performing today aged 83, and he has now moved an estimated 250 million records in worldwide sales.