Help Pete buy a trike to raise funds for DMRC Stanford Hall

When he was 18 Pete followed in his grandad’s footsteps and joined the Royal Air Force. A long and decorated career of 35 years followed, serving Queen and Country all over the world and in various conflicts, including the Gulf War and operations out in Syria, the Falklands and the Middle East.

Whilst in the RAF he discovered a love of motorbikes and was an avid member of station bike clubs wherever he was posted. His dream was one day, on leaving the RAF to complete the Holy Grail of UK routes, the North Coast 500.

However in June 2022 a life-changing stroke meant that he had to hang up his helmet. leathers and sell his beloved bike. During the first few weeks following his stroke we did not know whether he would pull through but his ‘never give up attitude and fighting spirit’ won through and he did. What followed was a long recovery of rehabilitation at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall where he had to reteach his brain to tell his body to sit, stand and walk again and thanks to the amazing staff that’s just what he did, although he still needs a stick to get about nowadays. The stroke has been life-changing and this has had a huge impact on not only his physical health but also his mental well-being.

In December 2023 Pete was medically discharged from the RAF leaving him without a purpose in life until he decided that he would like to raise funds for DMRC to give back something for all the support they gave him and the rest of our family and to help future serving members of the Armed Forces that may need their help in the future. He also wanted to raise funds for The Stroke Association to support other stroke survivors and their families.

This then gave him a focus and he decided that he wanted to complete the NC500. So he looked into how he could do this and found a company producing trikes that would give him the ability to do this, since he could no longer ride a conventional motorbike.

Because we feel that this will make great in roads into improving his mental health we as a family have therefore decided to start a Go Fund Me page to raise funds to purchase one of their trikes to enable him to then seek sponsorship and raise funds for DMRC Stanford Hall and the Stroke Association and essentially once again feel the breeze on his knees.