RHET Chairman Alistair Marshall is currently covering hundreds of miles over eight days to raise funds for the education charity RHET. His challenge started at Stobhill Primary, Gorebridge on Tuesday morning, Alistair is making his way around all 13 RHET areas across Scotland, including RNCI in the north-east, before arriving at the Royal Highland Showground on Wednesday.

Thanks to the incredible support for individuals and businesses, the initial target of £10k has been smashed and is currently sitting at over double! NFU Mutual are the lead sponsor for the challenge, with Graham’s Dairies, Kite Consulting, Hillhouse Group, Scottish Blackface Sheep Association and SRUC amongst the next tier supporters.

‘Keeping our services free of charge for schools is so important to RHET as it helps us to take the classroom to the countryside, for pupils and schools all over Scotland’, explains Alistair. ‘This challenge was inspired by our previous chair George Lawrie who took a tractor on tour round Scotland in 2019 and who doesn’t love a bit of friendly competition to inspire a great cause! My wife Fiona is cycling with me on the road and we are being joined by RHET volunteers and sponsors, and vintage tractor escorts along the way’.

Accompanying Alistair is ‘Sky’, one of the RHS ‘Flock to the Show’ sheep who was the winning design by Daniel Threlkeld from Eaglesfield School. Dumfries artist Tricia from Falu Studios adorned Sky with the colourful rural scenes chosen by the judges out of over 1,600 entries. The winning prize for his design is a free trip to the Royal Highland Show for the whole school. Sky will be auctioned by RHET at their gala dinner next February to keep the fundraising live.

If you would like to support the chairman’s cycle challenge, there is a dedicated JustGiving page (https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/RHET-ChairmansCycleChallenge?invite=true) or scan the QR code if you are visiting the Royal Highland Show next week.

You will be able to see Sky and the other Flock to the Show sheep who will be dotted around the showground as part of a trail for all the family to enjoy.