223 LIKED AND SHARED...

So the JustGiving page is live so it was time to share it with all our friends and family. The easiest way to do it was to post a message on Facebook with a link to our page. We put it on and let the power of social media do its thing. I also sent the updated JustGiving link to the rest of Team Ellis, and they promptly spammed their friends - good work, guys!

Below is the message I put on:

[...]

Me and Lisa, along with four friends (Richie, Rachel, Carl and Matt), are embarking on a 2,200-mile, 12-day road trip across Europe in aid of New Start, a charity supporting the heart and lung transplant programme at Wythenshawe Hospital - one of only five UK centres performing such procedures.

The drive is in memory of our amazing friend Ellis, who sadly died way too soon.  He could have passed even sooner, but he was fortunate enough to receive a life-saving double lung transplant.  This procedure gave him many more happy years to spend with his friends and family. We want to raise funds to give others the chance of more happy years with their loved ones.

Lisa and I are travelling in an Abarth 500, a car painfully unsuited to long-distance travel, but chosen in the spirit of the adventure.  

The route runs: 

Liverpool → Namur, Belgium → Freiburg, Germany → Menaggio, Italy → Monte Carlo → Nice, France → Sète, France → San Sebastián, Spain → Bilbao, Spain → Portsmouth → Liverpool, taking in the Alps and the Pyrenees along the way, as well as a 32-hour trip across the Bay of Biscay.

We are raising money via a Team Ellis JustGiving page, with suggested donations based on 1p per mile:

• £7.50 covers the official rally leg (750 miles)

• £12 covers the trip from Liverpool to Nice (1,200 miles)

• £22 covers the full 2,200-mile journey

We know that times are hard at the moment, so ANYTHING you can chip in is amazing. All funds go to a fantastic cause and will have a real-life-changing impact.  

We wouldn't swap the time we had with Ellis for anything. With your help, we hope to give others the most important thing for people living with a chronic condition, more time.

[...]

Within no time, we had some donations, and by the end of the first night, we had a whopping £500 in the pot! A ridiculous amount, but very much appreciated. I still need to get our company involved, as Ellis worked there too and had many friends, and I'm sure they will dig deep. Amazingly, we may need to up our target total. How wild is that?