Our mission to help unsung heroes

A few months ago, my colleague Stuart Preston approached me and outlined his idea to raise some vital funds for our nominated charity, Maggie’s Centres.
At the time it sounded insane! A three-strong cycling team taking on 360 miles of Scotland over just four days. It’s a huge feat of endurance, but if enthusiasm counts for anything, I could see that Stuart and fellow colleagues Paula Fraser and Ross Lamont, were absolutely ready to give it everything they had.

Fast forward to today and we’re now just a couple of weeks away from setting out on the road. I’ll be cheering the team on from the comfort of a car (it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it!) and following them as they embark on a mission to cycle between each of the Maggie’s Centres sites, including Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Every few years, Grant Thornton selects a new charity to support, each of them doing something inspirational with finite resources. We chose Maggie’s Centres because of the amazing work they do helping cancer patients through the physical and emotional trauma of treatment.
For me, this is personal. I survived bowel cancer and the team at Maggie’s Centres were there for me every single day. The charity is just that — a charity. Despite providing such a lifeline service, there is no public funding. It’s all down to the kindness of strangers, willing to donate money to keep the lights on.

And, that is why we’re doing what we’re doing. We’ll be working through the sweat, tears and inevitable muscle aches, knowing that we’re doing our little bit to help people through their most challenging times.
We set ourselves a pretty enormous target of £20,000, but we’re edging closer to that figure every day, as more and more people learn why we’re doing this. It would be amazing if you could donate anything you can. Every penny counts, and you can be assured that your support will make a huge difference to the thousands of people in Scotland fighting cancer every day.
Thank you!
Gill Hunter is a Wealth Advisory Senior Manager at Grant Thornton in Scotland.
