A message from Baby Milk Action support (and area contact) Sally Etheridge IBCLC

World Breastfeeding Week 2014 1 – 7 August
A Winning Goal for Life!

800km cycle ride – please sponsor me!

Sall Etheridge IBCLCThis year’s World Breastfeeding Week will focus on how protecting, supporting and promoting breastfeeding can help achieve the 8 global Millennium Development Goals, set by governments and the United Nations in 1990, to fight poverty and promote healthy and sustainable development by 2015.

There is very little time left before this deadline. And a very long way to go.

As a cyclist, I won’t be watching the World Cup! My goal instead is to raise money for three important projects that in different ways aim to help achieve those Millennium Development Goals through their work protecting, supporting and promoting breastfeeding –

    • Baby Milk Actionwww.babymilkaction.org – the UK member of IBFAN, working to protect babies from the effects of unethical marketing of breastmilk substitutes
    • The UK working group on World Breastfeeding Trends Initiativewww.lcgb.org/wbtiuk – WBTi is a global initiative to track, assess and monitor the effectiveness of national infant feeding strategies. The UK working group aims to bring together stakeholders from the four UK countries to hold our government to account on what it is doing to protect, support and protect breastfeeding.
    • Mammas Breastfeeding Support Project, Leicesterwww.mammas.org.uk – Mammas is a self-funded community breastfeeding support project which provides mother-to-mother education, information and support among a multi-ethnic community, with many mothers who are new to the UK.

According to WHO, about 800,000 under-five deaths per year could be saved if all children 0–23 months were optimally breastfed. I aim to cycle 800,000 metres – 500 miles – over the weeks from now until World Breastfeeding Week – in three one-off cycling ‘marathons’ – 200 miles on 4th/5th July, 100 miles on 13th July, and 200 miles on 16th/17th July. Photos and details will be uploaded onto the Leicester Mammas facebook page.

Use the widget below to sponsor me via Baby Milk Action’s online shop. You will be taken to the secure shopping cart hosted by romancart and have a choice of secure ways to pay.


To find out more about the World Breastfeeding Week 2014 and the global Millennium Development Goals, go to www.worldbreastfeedingweek.org

Please share this page on social media and download my leaflet.

Thank you!!! Sally Etheridge IBCLC – sallyjeth@hotmail.co.uk

Ride reports

50 miles – Leicester – Nottingham and back, Tuesday 1st July.

This was a really nice ride in sunny weather; I found a country route, and got to our East Midlands Regional LCGB meeting 45 mins ahead of schedule, so popped into a café in West Bridgford. The meeting was great too, an enjoyable time with colleagues reviewing DVDs, planning next year’s LCGB conference,and talking about the challenges of working in the field of infant feeding, and the need for the government and NHS to do more to keep up the momentum from 2000s.

200 miles, Leicester – Swindon – Leicester, Friday 4th and Sat 5th July.

I set off early on Friday morning to avoid commuter traffic around Leicester, but the first section round Leicester was still uninspiring and nasty, and I was glad to get onto the Fosse Way. Fosse Way is an amazing road. Built originally by the Romans, it is a dead straight line from Leicester all the way to Cirencester in the SW. Despite being a fairly main route it is quiet and a good road surface and easy riding – until it becomes an A road, when you hit the Cotswolds! After an hour’s lunch break in Stow on the Wold, I decided to leave the main road and take a country route to Swindon, and my friend Lynn’s house. A very good decision, lovely quiet pretty roads and countryside, except for the preparations being made for the MoD Air Tattoo in a place called Fairford. I knew something was going on by the massive, very menacing looking aircraft lurking in the sky…the stealth bombers were especially scary, can’t imagine what it must feel like if you saw one approaching in any of the places we regularly send planes to, as a mother or father or indeed as a child.

Got home with no untoward incidents at 4.15pm, Surprisingly my legs were not aching too much, I was pleased I had found it reasonably easy – it has been a long time since I did any long rides!

75 Miles – Leicester – Finedon, Northants and back, Friday 11th July

Off to cycle to my parents’ house, avoiding the A14 and A6 – a pretty route via Foxton, famous for its many canal locks. Northamptonshire is not especially well-known but is attractive, with limestone and ironstone villages, and also fairly hilly! One especially uplifting sight was the stretch of roadside full of bright pink everlasting pea and pale yellow lupins. Loads of red kites and buzzards overhead – these are so common now in this area, and it is not uncommon to see up to 20 red kites circling over my parents’ house. I used to ride this way in reverse with my dad 30 years ago to visit cycle shops in Leicester – Julies still exists, but Leedhams is long gone. Both my parents, in their 80s, still cycle most days.

90 miles – circular route NW from Leicester to Derbyshire, through Charnwood, and across to NE Leicestershire Wolds – Sunday 13th July

In 1997 the Cycle Touring Club had their annual ‘Birthday Rides’ festival just up the road from here in Scraptoft , at the old DMU campus. Our son Robert was 2, and we camped with my parents – my dad had broken his femur cycling in Majorca earlier that year, and was cycling with his crutch strapped to his crossbar! Robert was in his kiddy seat on the back of my bike – now he’s just finished his first year at university! This ride was one of the longest routes on offer – we did much shorter rides with Robert on board, but I still have the pack of route sheets; carefully planned with detailed instructions, via pretty villages and parkland, very little traffic, a hard ride but really pleasant, despite downpours all morning. A very historic ride too – rode through Bradgate Park, with herds of deer and loads of early morning runners, past Bosworth Battlefield, through Calke Abbey and Staunton Harrold estates; I even passed an ancient gibbet, where apparently a murderer’s body was left hanging from 1801 to 1818 (Bilstone, near Market Bosworth)! Amazing what you find out!

95 miles – circular route N from Leicester to Newark and the Vale of Belvoir and back through the Lincolnshire Wolds – Wed 16th July

The final ride, and another from the 1997 CTC ‘Birthday Rides’. Hot and breezy in the morning, sped along with the wind behind me via some lovely villages to Newark, a town I have never visited til now. I also passed the largest pile of horseshoes in the world, at the Old Forge at Scarrington. Found a café in a side street off the main square, for coffee and cake (one of the bonuses of long cycle rides is feeling entitled to sit alone in cafes eating cake!) Finally found my way out of Newark and heading the right direction. Afternoon didn’t live up to the nice route of the morning – rather nondescript roads, headwind, and ran out of water about 25 miles from home, and passed through one empty village after another – no shop, no café, no pub and not a soul in sight! Glad to get home – only to have to change out of the cycling gear and RUN with aching legs up to the garage to collect the car before closing time!