London to Paris cycle ride ends in marriage proposal!
25 June 2012
Author: MS Trust
"Exhausting and exhilarating" is how Sally Day describes her London to Paris cycle ride, which ended earlier this month in a romantic proposal of marriage from her partner Steve.
Sally has worked at the MS Trust for the past five years and is responsible for sending out tens of thousands of our publications each year to support people with MS and health professionals. Sally's late husband Kevin had MS and sadly passed away in April 2011, after having spent the last five years of his life in a nursing home.
She said, "Working for the MS Trust you know how important it is for people to help with raising funds. We wanted to do this challenge in Kevin's memory and spent a year training and fundraising to raise as much as we possibly could."
As well as asking friends and family for sponsorship, Sally and Steve organised a darts match, sold cakes at local schools, sold unwanted items at car boot sales and on eBay, and put collecting tins in local pubs to raise funds. Their biggest fundraising event was a Soul Disco, which raised £800 in one night. In total, the pair raised around £3,500 to support the work of the MS Trust.
Sally said that although she had never done much cycling before, she and Steve really enjoyed training for the ride, "We were going out about three times a week, depending on the weather, getting up to 60 miles in a day. We managed to fit it in around work and family life.
"The ride itself was very well organised and we were really lucky with the weather, it was great. I was nervous at the beginning and could hardly sleep, but there was never any point on the ride when I wanted to give up. It was really good to meet the other people who were fundraising for the MS Trust. Each morning at breakfast I would wear my MS Trust T-shirt so that people could see which charity I was raising funds for."
Best of all was Steve's surprise proposal, made in front of hundreds of other cyclists after they arrived In Paris, against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. Sally said, "They asked Steve to come forward and I thought he was going to make a speech, then I heard everyone clapping and saw that he'd got down on one knee! He asked me if I would be his wife and I was on cloud nine. It was great with so many people there, they were all hugging me and congratulating us - even some of the men were crying!"
We would like to say a huge thank you to Sally and Steve for all their hard work fundraising for the MS Trust over the past year and wish them lots of happiness for their future together.