Staff at Dobbies, Ponteland, chose Northumbria Blood Bikes as their charity of the year for 2016 and 2017. Throughout 2016 colleagues at the store welcomed Northumbria Blood Bike volunteers into their store and through the generosity of their customers successfully raised enough money to bike a new addition to the charities fleet.

After a year of fundraising colleagues at the garden centre are proud to present a brand new fully equipped bike that will become part of the operational fleet.  All their hard work has paid off and the addition will help Northumbria Blood Bikes to save lives across the North East.

Paul Travis Anderson, General Manager at Dobbies Ponteland said: "The Northumbria Blood Bikes charity was chosen by our team to be our Local Charity Partner for 2016 and 2017.  We really appreciate the voluntary work the Blood Bikers do in our region and with the support of our very generous customers and the charity's committed fundraisers we are delighted that enough money has been raised to put another bike on the road and the fact it will be called Dobbies makes us all very proud."

Kirsty Lawrence, Publicity Officer for Northumbria Blood Bikes, said: “With the demand for our volunteer run service increasing, the number of jobs we carry out each month, means we cover a greater number of miles. This bike will go straight into our front line operational fleet potentially saving hundreds of lives of people in the North East. We really appreciate the hard work the staff and customers at Dobbies have put into raising funds for us and want to say a big thank you to everyone involved.”

Photographs taken by Ross Mackenzie