On 29th April 2014, I release my first post entitled “What’s it all about” i.e. why on earth am I writing a blog! 

It was simple in those days, I just wanted your money 🙂  I was fundraising as many diagnosed cancer patients and their supporters frequently do. In my own case, I was fundraising for my local NET charity who were raising money to support NET patients in various ways.  Their latest challenge at that time was getting access to intraoperatrive radiotherapy machine (IORT), something that could help ‘blast’ small cells and tumours in places near to the ‘operative bed’ and would help to cytoreduce (debulk) the disease and reduce the need for other therapy downsteam.  A good cause, so I walked 84 miles with my wife Chris asking people to donate.  My blog was the platform for this walk. I eventually raised over £4000. 

However, I also used the walk to function as a turning point in my health and life challenges at the time.  I selected a challenge already on my “to do list” and had been for over 10 years festering in a drawer.  I had recently retired and after an entire lifetime of working (where most days were challenging!), I was looking forward to taking up new challanges at my own pace (no pun intended).  Read about the Hadrian’s Wall challenge by clicking here or on the picture below.

The blog turned out to be very successful and after many people suggsted I keep writing, I cracked on and here we are today!  I now have almost 2.5 million views, won three awards, and the blog has expanded to include 3 Facebook pages, 3 X (formerly twitter) accounts and the biggest Facebook support group in the world.  If you are a part of any of the above, then technically you are also an award winner – my first award was for “Best Community”. The others were “Best Blog” (after 3 finals – very tough competition) and “Lifetime Achievement”. The latter was interesting as I was just getting started 🙂    As a Brit, winning 3 USA based awards was like being the blog equivalent of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and David Bowie (…… well, kinda!)

For those who follow me, for those who support me, and particularly for those who open my blogs and read them, many many many thanks!  I am truly grateful.