Currie gets on bike to visit

Former health minister Edwina Currie has signed up to a charity 2,000km cycle challenge - and is dropping in on Ludlow Cycle Club this weekend to start training.

The challenge will see Mrs Currie cycling a leg of the event from Warsaw to St Petersburg and helping raise funds for Marie Curie Cancer Care. She will join up with the cycling club tomorrow to pick up some tips.

Mrs Currie said: "My husband, John Jones, and I have already signed up to do one stage of Bike the Baltic 2008 and want as many people as possible to join us.

"We'll be doing the last leg from Tallinn to St Petersburg. I've started my training by cycling six miles up and down hills to the gym and then working out there."I picked Ludlow Cycle Club to train with partly because my husband is a governor at Bedstone College and is going to a meeting this weekend, so I thought I'd make myself useful, and partly because Shropshire is such a beautiful place.

"If you can cycle around Shropshire, it's like cycling from Poland to Russia."

Mrs Currie said she had always been a fan of Madam Curie and wanted to be a scientist like the famous physicist.

"I did Celebrity Mastermind in 2004 and she was my subject and I won," she said. "But, apart from that, it's a great charity. It provides so much home nursing for people in Shropshire while they are in the final stages of cancer, but who don't want to be in hospital but they need as much help as they can get."

The event will take place between August and September next year and is part of the charity's 60th anniversary celebrations.

The Shropshire fundraising office is now looking for people to join a team of cyclists. The epic journey is broken down into four stages - Warsaw to Vilnius, Vilnius to Riga, Riga to Tallinn and Tallinn to St Petersburg. Riders can take on as few or as many of the routes as they like.

For more details or for a registration pack call community fundraiser Michelle McQuillin on (01352) 754596.

By Catherine Roche