This is NOT Just a Bike Ride to Cannes Lions
The FireFlies Tour is one of those things that has the power to restore your faith in humanity.
Today, MassiveMusic’s Helen Bellringer, Paul Reynolds and publisher Steven Joyce will embark on an epic ride. Together with another fifty or so like-minded people, they will cycle to help raise money for Bloodwise, a UK charity dedicated to funding research into all blood cancers. A cause that MassiveMusic strongly supports, as something that has occurred to one of its team members, with his family enduring not one, but two cases of leukaemia over the last few years.
From Lake Geneva over the French Alps to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the challenge is to ride more than 1000km over 18 mountains for eight long and fearsome days. The big arrival is expected on June 21st, when a swarm of riders will proudly pull into the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, where MassiveMusic will be hosting their party together with MediaMonks.
Life, love, friendship. The ride is a celebration of the ups and downs we encounter in life but, above all, it’s a combination of tears, laughter, mountains, ice creams, reggae music, and colossal amounts of joy. Just as cancer sufferers don’t know what each day will bring, The FireFlies don’t know the route until the day before they ride each stage.
“Last year, I was riding for close friends who were going through round after round of gruelling treatment for leukaemia. Fortunately, they all got through, but the illness is far from beaten, so I’m riding again this year,” Sounds Like Publishing’s Managing Director, Steven Joyce, comments.
Helen Bellringer, Creative Producer at MassiveMusic London, adds: “Little did I know that in the space of six months, I would turn from a casual commuter cyclist to a lycra-clad maniac. Hours have been spent on Google comparing the reviews of different bum creams and weekends offered up as sacrifice to the gods of the long-distance training ride.”
The FireFlies’ name stems from the inaugural year when, late one night, the original crew descended Col du Turini in pitch-black conditions. With no moonlight to guide them through the forest, it was thousands of fireflies that lit the crew’s path down the mountain and led them to safety.
Paul Reynolds, Managing Director at MassiveMusic London, concludes: “I was lucky enough to meet somebody at London’s Hammersmith Hospital who’d been treated on the incredibly expensive, not readily available machines that we’d funded. They were basically alive because of the FireFlies, and that’s the same for a number of people we’ve met through the years. To be able to give someone with cancer just one pain free day is reward enough, but the tour has genuinely saved lives.”
To date, The FireFlies Tour has raised over £1.7 million for those who are affected by the condition. Please support this cause: together we can help beat blood cancer.
All proceeds go to Bloodwise via the related JustGiving Pages:
