Gavin Keith Hough

Hey everyone. Hope you are all well.

Just wanted to share my big challenge for 2025 and the reasons behind it. Whilst hoping you can support me in reaching my fundraising goal for the ‘Ambitious about Autism’ charity.

As a keen cyclist I have always wanted to box off a double century and cycling Manchester to London has been a bucket list ride for a few years now.

Over the last few years Rapha has led the way with the M2L charity ride. The distance is 220 miles with quite a few thousand feet elevation in between two phenomenal cities.

The date of the event is Sunday 22nd June and the set off time from Manchester Rapha store is 5am. And I believe we have until 11:30pm to arrive at the Rapha HQ in London. I plan to arrive a few hours before the cut off point. But in the first instance - I just want to make it in time.

Now here is why this ride is important to me. I will be riding for my slightly younger brother, Matthew.

It was identified only a handful of years ago that he has autism. I don't know how severe it is considered but I believe its origins are as a result of a vaccination gone wrong when he was just a baby which also affected his brain.

Physically you wouldn't know it had left its mark but mentally it has and within moments of speaking with him you would know of an underlying condition.

I see his struggle everyday with how life is for him and how unfair it all is. How it has affected us as a family unit and the battles that my parents have faced dealing with it all.

He is smart kid with a tremendous memory - you could meet him once and he will find out your name and birthday. Ten years later you could bump in to him and he would greet you by reciting that information.

A tremendous Pool player and not bad at Dominoes either. A genius with letters and numbers (he loved Countdown as a kid).

His beauty as a human being and something I wish we all had little more of, is that he views everyone on the same level. He would buy everyone a beer and not judge who you are or what you do.

I am sure the support network in 2025 is much better than ever. But for the majority of my brother’s life, the world wasn’t built to support him, especially in adulthood. My parents have found it really difficult to get any kind of help since he turned 18 (he will be 45 in March 2025).

Up to the age of 18, it felt like we had a great support network from the schools that he attended, to the doctors and specialist teachers who were there to look out for him. Then suddenly that support network was all gone and it was left to my parents to deal with.

My relationship with him… I often struggle, we aren't as close as we should be. Lots of frustrations between the two of us. Felt huge (internal) pressure to stay close at the family home, hidden in the background, just to keep an eye on all that goes on and step in every now and again when things get stressful.

I know I should and could be a better brother to him. More patient and understanding but me and my parents are simply learning as we go along. We mainly focus on just keeping the peace and avoiding any discussion around it all, as it causes too many heated moments.

Very envious of my friends who have ‘normal’ sibling relationships. It just hasn’t worked like that for me and my brother.

By crossing the finish line in London, hopefully our collective effort to raise a little money and understanding goes as far as it possibly can for Ambitious about Autism.

Your donations mean far more than you will ever know!

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Gavin

Ps the photo is from many years ago. My brother Matthew is on the left. It was taken on New Years Eve in Sydney, Australia. It was a once in a lifetime trip that I got to share with him and a small group of my closest friends. I finish with a huge shout out and thank you to those friends who supported me in looking out for him on that trip. The boys even took care of him on the return leg home, whilst I continued on to New Zealand and continue to look out for him to this day. Stuart, Neil, Lee, Stephen, Paul & Mark - I don't think I have ever told any of you how much that meant to me.