Unique charity cycle to travel through Ballymoney and Moyle

The Tour de Connor cycle will see the Rt Rev Alan Abernethy, Bishop of Connor; the Rev Bill Boyce, rector of St Brigid’s, Mallusk; his curate, the Rev Andrew Ker, and parishioner Sam Cunningham pedalling almost 350 miles and visiting every church in the diocese over six days!

They will be in Ballymoney on Thursday June 3 and in Ballycastle on Saturday June 5, and will stop at every single Church of Ireland parish, including St Thomas’s, Rathlin Island, where they will collect a list of names compiled by parishioners in memory of loved ones who have died of cancer.

They will also be collecting sponsorship and hope to raise 20,000 the local Friends of the Cancer Centre charity.

For Bill the sponsored cycle will be emotionally as well as physically demanding, for the event has been organised in remembrance of his wife Sandra, who was just 56 when she died from cancer last year.

The ‘Tour de Connor’ will start at St Brigid’s Parish Church, Mallusk, on Tuesday June 1, and the team expects to be in the saddle for six days as they tackle the gruelling 346 mile route round the diocese, finishing back at St Brigid’s on Sunday June 6, the first anniversary of Sandra’s death.

The Book of Remembrance, made up of the lists collected at each parish church, will be dedicated at a Service of Thanksgiving and Remembrance on Sunday June 6 at 4pm in St Brigid’s. The preacher will be the Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Rev Alan Harper.

A keen cyclist, Andrew has had a route in mind for some time, but it was Bill’s wish to do something to remember Sandra, and to thank the Cancer Centre, that turned an aspiration into a reality.

Friends of the Cancer Centre is a registered charity based at the Cancer Centre, Northern Ireland's regional centre for excellence located at Belfast City Hospital. The charity relies entirely on voluntary donations and raises money to put directly into projects that make a real and meaningful difference to the lives of thousands of patients and their families.

Donations to help the St Brigid’s Tour de Connor cyclists reach their target can be made in the following ways: online at www.justgiving.com/Bill-Boyce, telephone donations via calling the Friends of the Cancer Centre on 028 9069 9393, or by posting a cheque, payable to ‘Friends of the Cancer Centre’, marked on the back with ‘Tour de Connor,’ to: Friends of the Cancer Centre, Belfast City Hospital, Lisburn Road, Belfast, BT9 7AB.