An amazing lady – a true inspiration.

Each year Cruise.co.uk holds it’s annual conference at Christmas time and they very generously hold this across 4 days and generally on board a ship. This year was no different and this year we enjoyed 3 nights on board the Marco Polo sailing from Bristol to Dublin.

The conference is a time to say ‘Thank You’ to all staff for their hard work over the past year, we enjoy the Christmas party and eat, drinks and be merry. It is has a serious side to it. With 2 main offices in Redditch and Birmingham and over 100 homeworkers, we are now a  large and spread out company and conference gives the bosses the opportunity to get us all together. A number of cruise lines are invited  to join us and update us on their products and the management can share the business successes and strategies going forwards with us too.

This year, a guest speaker from outside of travel was invited to join us and we were given a talk by Claire Lomas.

Claire was a successful event rider who in 2007 at the age of 27 fell from a horse whilst competing and was paralysed from the waist down. Her life changed in a split second. In hospital was told there was no hope for her going forwards and no point in trying to rehabilitate the parts that no longer worked. However she wasn’t willing to accept this, discharged herself and  started an intensive course of rehabilitation, which she continues with today.

In 2012 after a battle with various people, she obtained a robotic suit and after a lot of practice and determination she completed the London Marathon, she walked the 26 mile course in 17 days having been told she would never walk again. Claire raised £210,000 for Spinal Research.

Since then Claire has gone on to do all sorts, including beating her marathon time by 8 days, learning to ride a motorcycle and hand cycling around the country. All to raise money to help prevent / reverse paralysis.

Claire told her story to us is a lovely unassuming way. She clearly had dark days and shared these too but spoke to us with humour and sincerity. Following her accident she has lit the Paralympic flame, been awarded an MBE at Buckingham Palace and hopes to ride the Isle of Man TT course next year. Her underlying message was one of opportunity. Had she not been injured, she would never have had these opportunities.

I have come home from conference truly inspired by this remarkable woman. My mind and body are buzzing with things that I am now going to do, from putting more effort into my running to simply tidying the odd cupboard that is over flowing but has been left to get worse. Life shouldn’t be about putting things off or deciding they are too hard. Everything is an opportunity and I am fortunately in a position to get on with things much more easily than Claire can.

Claire has a website www.claireschallenge.co.uk which tells us more about her fundraising work and she has written a book ‘Finding My Feet’ which tells her story in more detail. I urge you to check these out and read her story for yourself.