Care To Carry Challenge

This is a keg carry with a difference. A charity challenge that will push me beyond my limits for the baby loss community. Walking 250 km in 7 days, along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, with a 30 kg beer keg strapped to my back.

This is something I'm passionate about because of personal experience.

I had an experience of miscarriage in October 2021. But it wasn’t until six months later that I experienced the weight of this loss. After the miscarriage I’d been trying to push how I felt to one side. It didn’t start as a conscious decision, but the longer it went on the more effort it took.

Then sitting on a train, on the way back from a holiday, I was confronted with reality. The holiday was the last plan I’d made before the baby was going to arrive. But there wasn’t going to be a baby.

Even now it hurts to write that. And I know so many other people who've been affected by baby loss too.

Loss is what happens to you in life - meaning is what you make happen. And my way of doing that is to take positive action for others. For every man experiencing baby loss and for the wider community.

So 30 kg is the weight I'm choosing to carry, to show what’s usually hidden. And 250 km is a distance I’ve chosen, to represent the estimated 250,000 miscarriages in the UK every year. Join me by choosing a donation amount that reflects these numbers:

£12.50
£25.00
£32.50

There's too much silence around baby loss.

That's why I'm taking on this challenge during Baby Loss Awareness Week. If you've been affected by any kind of loss, then you have something in common with people affected by baby loss. And you can help.

I’ve set an incredibly ambitious fundraising target, so that I can raise enough money to help Plan of Action get started because we’re a brand-new registered charity and the only one in the UK with a specific remit to help men after miscarriage.

And so that I can also raise enough money to help two other brilliant charities in the baby loss community, because we have to tackle the impacts of baby loss together. Every penny raised will go to these charities and be split as follows:

Plan of Action - 66%
Petals - 17%
Tommys - 17%

Please give what you can and please share this fundraiser with friends and family. Every donation will make a huge difference, and word of mouth plays a massive part in raising awareness. You also might not realise just how many people in your life have been affected by baby loss. Because for every three new cases of cancer, there are two miscarriages. But you don't hear only one minute more of adverts for cancer charities, than you do for baby loss charities.

Cancer used to be shrouded in silence. It isn't any more. With your donation and help, we can do that again for baby loss and make sure things improve for everyone.