Craig Cheetham on the good deeds of the young…
CHARITY HEROES SUPPORTED BY
While writing these pages is always a heart-warming experience, one thing that this month’s Charity Heroes round up has delighted me with is the prevalence of young enthusiasts using old cars as a medium to do wonderful things. Massive respect is due, then, to Connor, Dan, Oli and Jess, who are very much the stars of this month’s charity news and who are all Dubrovnik-bound, but with two very different missions. All four of them are currently university students, and they’re all old car nuts who have between them rescued two Nineties survivors and are using them to raise money for good causes.
Connor and Dan are off to the historic city in a 1994 Skoda Felicia to raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK, while Oli and Jessica are also off to the Croatian coastline for a different cause – they’re covering an indirect 4000-mile plus round trip in a 1999 Toyota Starlet and will be raising funds for Amnesty International. Both fantastic causes and four equally fantastic people, yet between them they don’t even have a combined age of 80.
It's wonderful to see, and as well as underlining the tremendous work that kind people do for charity with hard work, dedication and a genuine passion, it also reminds me of just how much road trips and the cars you complete them in can cement lifelong friendships.
I have very fond memories of similar journeys (and, moreover, friends) in my own younger years – an Austin Allegro and a Land Rover 110 being the automotive protagonists and in each case also doing wonderful work for charity. In the meantime, if you find any spare change down the back of the sofa, there are four fantastic youngsters featured in these pages who really deserve your support.
If you, your car club or your friends have got anything planned to raise money for charity, we absolutely want to hear about it and talk about it in these pages. Please drop us a line at practicalclassics@bauermedia.co.uk and we’ll help you in any way we can.
FOCUSING ON...
Connor and Dan prepare to Skoda long way round
A pair of engineering students are getting ready to raise a target of £2500 for Alzheimer’s Research UK by completing a round trip of more than 4000 miles in a Skoda Favorit called Ferdinand, which is 10 years their senior.
Connor Heath and Daniel Beaney, both 19, will be setting off from Coventry, Warwickshire, to Dubrovnik in June and have already raised over 80 per cent of their £2500 fundraising target. Their aim is to complete the journey in eight days, with a stopover at the Skoda Museum in Mlada Boleslav on the way back – situated on the site where the Favorit was built in 1994.
Both Dan and Connor aare working towards care
