A charity motorcycle ride is being organised that will cover 19,000km and be completed in Bishop Auckland next year.
The first leg of the ride in Australia will take in Rockhampton, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney before finishing back in Brisbane. The motorbikes will then be transported to Vladivostok in Russia. The ride will continue overland across Russia and eastern and western Europe, before completing in Bishop Auckland.
The Ride to Remember aims to raise money for Alzheimer’s research in Australia and the UK, and to make more people aware of the disease.
“My mother was born in 1933 Bishop Auckland, the heart of coal mining country in the English northeast and sadly passed away in a Nursing home that included Alzheimer’s and Dementia sufferers on the Sunshine Coast Australia on the 19th May 2012,” explains Paul Brown, who will be making the journey.
“My mother would often call for her mother, telling me she needed to go home ‘I want to go home back to Bishop Auckland’ she repeated over and over calling out for her mum. She last saw her mother in 1963 before immigrating and in 1968 mourned her passing, unable to attend the funeral back in the UK. It is my determination to return my mother to Bishop Auckland, to lay her ashes next to that of her mother’s in a tiny cemetery in the grounds of St James Church, Coundon.”
Donations can be made via the website for the ride, and will go direct to the charities. Potential sponsors can also find contact details on the website.