{"id":732665,"date":"2026-08-09T17:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T17:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/732665\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T17:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T17:16:09","slug":"manchester-couple-begin-round-the-world-cycling-challenge-for-parkinsons-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/732665\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester couple begin round-the-world cycling challenge for Parkinson’s disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former professional rugby player, who represented Ireland at under-20 level, has begun an 18,000-mile (30,000km) cycle around the world to raise \u00a350,000 for charity.<\/p>\n

Ciaran Booth and his girlfriend Lucy Pickersgill, both 26, set off from Manchester Rugby Club in Stockport and plan to travel through about 30 countries over 18 months.<\/p>\n

The challenge was inspired by Ciaran’s mother, Annie Booth, who has Parkinson’s disease, external<\/a>, and said sport and exercise had helped her both physically and mentally.<\/p>\n

Annie said she was “really proud” of the couple and described their journey as “shining a light on what’s possible” for people living with the condition.<\/p>\n

Ciaran said his mother had found “loads of strength in community through sport” following her diagnosis, including through the charity Sport Parkinson’s.<\/p>\n

He said Sport Parkinson’s encouraged people with the condition to exercise and find support through a community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former professional rugby player, who represented Ireland at under-20 level, has begun an 18,000-mile (30,000km) cycle around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-732665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}