We're retracing the footsteps of our father's life after his sudden death from pancreatic cancer
Brothers Stuart, James and Michael Thomson have undertaken a 140-mile walking challenge which will see them visit significant places from their dad’s life after his sudden death from pancreatic cancer. Stuart spoke to us about why they wanted to take on the gruelling challenge.
We lost our dad two years ago, 10 days after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
When dad got his diagnosis, we thought it was quite a rare cancer, but we've actually met a lot of people this week who know others who have been affected by this disease, so it's still very widespread and the survival rates are really really low.
We had it in our minds to do something to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer UK and wanted to take on a big challenge - but also to do something that was very much in dad's memory.
A lot of good progress has been made in the last number of decades in terms of treatment, improving survival rates and detection of various cancers, but pancreatic cancer is not one of them, so anything we can do to raise awareness and funds for this charity would be very welcome by us as a family. It's something very dear to our hearts now and we want to provide support for families who are going through what we went through.
We’re taking on a big physical challenge. We're walking 140 miles over seven days, but it has a personal touch because we’re stopping at places that were important to dad and meant something to him. It's allowed us to combine our tribute with a challenge that people can get behind and support a worthy cause.
We launched our fundraiser at the start of the year when we were still planning the walk and contacted people who may want to get behind us - and a lot of them have. And now that we've started, people are seeing our updates and continuing to help our campaign. Even on the walk itself, people have seen us walking in our Pancreatic Cancer UK t-shirts walking down the street or coming into their restaurant or whatever and they're asking us about what we're doing and why we're doing it.
Once they hear our story a lot of them are kindly donating as well so we've been blown away by the kindness of people. We’ve also learned how far-reaching pancreatic cancer is in terms of the impact it’s had on so many people.
One of the nicest things about the walk has been to journey with my two brothers. We've had lots of conversations about our dad, particularly when we've visited these places, all the memories of the good times come flooding back and we've been able to reminisce and chat about them - it's just been a lovely thing to be able to do together.
These are places that meant a lot to dad and places that we’ll always associate with him so it’s great to visit them one by one. Our friends and family have been there to welcome us at some of the places and walked alongside us for a wee part of the walk so that's been lovely as well, just to see that support
Today (May 29) we’ll visit our family business, JK Thomson in Musselburgh, where my dad worked for 40 years and helped drive it to where it is today. That will be a special stop, we've got a lot of staff who had a lot of love and care for dad, and we’ll have family there as well of course. That will be our last stop today before we head to Edinburgh.
We’ll finish the walk at our family holiday home in Elie on Saturday, which would have been dad's 58th birthday. We're looking forward to that because we’ve never actually walked the Fife coastal path before and we’re expecting to have family and friends with us on that day.
We're a close family and we generally do things together so it's been nice to be able to share stories together and just remember dad, who he was and what he stood for. It was a blessing to be able to call him our father.