A motorcycle charity event in Brighton has raised £35,000 for heart care services across Sussex.
The annual Brightona motorcycle festival, now in its 11th year, attracted thousands of bikers to Brighton seafront last weekend to help raise money for the Sussex Heart Charity, an organisation that provides funding for heart care equipment, education and research.
The charity also delivers community resuscitation courses throughout Sussex. More than 130,000 members of the public have attended community resuscitation training over the past 20 years.
Brightona has raised £169,000 for charity since it was first held in 2003. Abby Goldin, who first started the event, said that the money is used to buy specialist equipment for the Royal Sussex County Hospital which the NHS could not supply.
Money raised in previous years has enabled the hospital’s cardiac department to buy equipment such as an optical coherence tomography machine, which allows surgeons to see tissues at microscopic resolution.
This year the three-day festival featured motorcycle equipment stalls, a wall of death display and live folk and rock music on three stages, as well as the traditional morning ride across the city, local newspaper The Argus reported.
Rachael Coles, a director and trustee of the event and one of this year’s volunteers, said: “People think of bikers and are scared or have a certain view, but Brightona is a family event that welcomes everyone.”
Image: Facebook.com/Brightona