Very rarely do we get to hear anything about what we are carrying, why or for who, it’s enough for us to know that someone needs our help but occasionally we do get a little more of the story.

The story starts at 2:30am on a cold winter’s day. Our controller takes a call from the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital

‘Good morning, we need a bike urgently, a patient is suspected of contracting malaria whilst on holiday, we need a blood sample analysed’.

‘No problem, where does the sample need to be delivered to’?

‘The tropical diseases laboratory in London’.

Just a little bit off our usual patch but duty rider was called and sent on his way. At this point the family that is Blood Bikes kicked into gear. It’s a three and half hour journey from RSH to London so a relay was set up with our colleagues covering Oxford and Northamptonshire. By the time our rider got to RSH everything was in place. Instead of what would have ended up as a 8 hour round trip (allowing for breaks) our rider was met at Warwick Services on the M40 by a member of the Northampton team who completed the job. The sample arrived in London just before 07:00, teamwork at its best.

Relay runs like this show the power of people working towards a common goal, in our case helping a patient in need. SSCBB have been involved in many such runs over the years involving up to four Blood Bike groups and covering journeys from Scotland to the South Coast.

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