Every year since 2006, staff at Simon Bailes Peugeot together with members of the Boundary 500 motorbike club, have dressed up in festive garb for a bracing pre-Christmas ride around Teesside in aid of Zoë’s Place Baby Hospice.
Over the past nine years, we have been proud to provide our backing to this wonderful charity ride ever since we discovered that Zoë’s Place relies almost entirely on public donations and must raise £1.2million to keep its doors open. The hospice, which is based in Normanby, Middlesbrough and also Coventry and Liverpool, provides palliative, respite and end-of-life care to babies and infants aged from birth to five years old suffering from life-limiting or life-threatening conditions.
This year’s event on November 28 is a special one as during and before the ride Simon Bailes Peugeot is helping to launch a national Zoe’s hospice event - Boundary 500 Zoe’s S.O.S Challenge - to support not only our own Teesside Hospice but also Coventry and Liverpool. Simon Bailes has supplied the livery for two motorcycles, and for the first time a Peugeot 2008 Santa Sled, driven by Santa which will provide a mobile sound system to lead the parade and play festive music.
This year’s Santa Ride has certainly come a long way since the first year where we raised £1600 which we all thought was pretty good at the time. The generous people of Cleveland have taken Zoe’s Place and the event to their hearts and in the last two years it has topped £29,000 each year with the current total raised for Zoe’s since 2006 amounting to an incredible £164, 500.
The event is still growing in popularity with both the riders and the public who line the streets to cheer us on as we pass through Stockton and Middlesbrough and all towns on route to finish in Redcar. The money raised is needed by the hospice as it costs, on average, £300 per day per baby, which means our efforts will ensure one baby can be looked after for 97 days.
Zoë’s Place first opened its doors and began welcoming our special babies and their families in 2004. Zoë is the Greek word meaning “gift of life” and Zoë’s Place believes that life is precious no matter how long it lasts. The hospice can take up to six infants at any one time and there is also ample accommodation and facilities for the whole family if required.
For more information about Zoe’s Place, please visit: http://www.zoes-place.org.uk/middlesbrough/
