The pharmacy team at a Ceredigion hospital are covering 2,121 miles in a month to raise funds for a “vital” medical motorbiking charity.

The pharmacy department at Bronglais have decided to complete 2,121 miles, collectively, throughout January in an attempt to raise £2,121 to support the “vital work Blood Bikes Aberystwyth do on a daily basis”.

The team decided to complete 2,121 miles as that’s the distance covered by Blood Bikes Aberystwyth, which offer a vital service for mid and north Wales delivering medicines, bloods, and other medial needs across the region, per month.

The pharmacy team have so far managed to raise £825.

Sean Thomas, who works as an Advanced Clinical Pharmacist in Bronglais, said: “We’re doing the 2,121 miles separately but we have organised a few walks together, and are planning on doing a big group walk towards the end of the month. We need to cover 68 miles a day, and are currently just above that at 75 miles per day. So we’re feeling optimistic we’ll complete the challenge. We’re just hoping the momentum continues up to 31 January.

“We decided to raise money for the blood bikes again as we see the vital work they do on a daily basis and we think they do an amazing job. We raised £4,500 for them a few years ago when we walked from Llangrannog to Aberystwyth and they were so grateful we decided to raise money for them again.”

The concept of blood bikes was first founded in the early 1960s in London by Margaret Ryerson and her husband. In 2008, the Nationwide Association of Blood Bikes (NABB) was created as a result of a meeting between four of the five operational blood bikes groups at the time to share best practice.

At the meeting, there was a “realisation that a blood bike service, operating to professional standards, would be a great benefit to the NHS if it were to be rolled out across the UK, rather than limited to mainly the south of England as was the case at the time”.

Between 2008 and 2019, the number of active blood bikes groups rose from 5 to over 40.

To donate to the pharmacy’s fundraising efforts, go to https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/bghpharmacybloodbikechallenge