A COUPLE from Kent have started a mission to cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats this week, passing through Camelford and Holsworthy on the way.

Annette and Robert Culshaw from Westgate-on-Sea in Kent are to cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats by eBike this month.

This is no mean challenge, given that Robert is 73 and Annette is 69-years-old.

Robert’s son Nick is currently in Harefield Hospital in London awaiting a heart transplant.

He has had many open-heart operations and has now been in hospital for seven months and is still waiting, such is the shortage of hearts for transplant.

With a wife and two young children at home on the Isle of Wight, he has always been fit, but has a debilitating heart disease known as ARVC (arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy).

It is a disease, which often strikes young athletes, usually in their teens. It used to be known as sudden death syndrome.

He has been described as a ‘remarkable man, whose courage and positivity shines through everything he does’.

The Lejog adventure is to raise money for Harefield Hospital’s transplant appeal, who are hoping to buy four new organ care systems, which keep donated hearts and lungs viable for up to four times longer than using traditional methods.

This means donated organs can come from hospitals further away, arrive in better condition and give medical staff longer to prepare for and perform life-saving surgery.

They will enable many more heart and lung transplants to be performed.

The pair hopes that the trip will also raise awareness of the importance of opting in to the organ donor scheme. There is a national shortage of donor organs and if the adventure can persuade just one person to sign the donor register, it will have been worthwhile for them.

The start of the trip in Land’s End today (Thursday) coincides with the NHS organ donation appeal.

Robert and Annette said: “This trip is not only a major challenge to ourselves, but a call to all other older people to follow our lead and have some fun whilst keeping fit. Electric bikes put the fun back into cycling and, given that electric bike owners get out on their bikes far more often than ordinary bike owners, they are getting more exercise and so reducing the risk of diabetes and obesity.

“National figures give an alarming picture of the incidence of both of these issues with regard to the detrimental effects on individual suffering from these problems, but also the incredible projected costs to the NHS.

“One of our aims is to raise the awareness of the benefit of electric bikes to those people who are unable to get out and about on an ordinary bike.”

Robert and Annette started their journey from Lands End on September 6. From there, they are to go through Penzance, Redruth, Whitecross, Bodmin, Camelford, Holsworthy, Tiverton and Taunton, and on into Somerset.

It will take them four days to cycle through these towns in Cornwall and Devon. Local points of interest include the Camel Trail, Crowdy Reservoir near Camelford, Derriton Viaduct and Hatherleigh Moor near Holsworthy.