Janice Houghton-Wallace is the go-to person on poultry at Smallholder and she has begun a significant challenge.

She hasn't ridden a bike since she was a child however she is now training to qualify to represent GB at the Gran Fondo World Championships in Italy later in the year in the aged 70+ race.

To do that Janice must compete in a cycle time trial race as part of the Tour of Cambridgeshire cycling festival in June at Peterborough.

In doing so, she is fundraising for Mesothelioma UK Charitable Trust. Her brother Stephen died of mesothelioma, the asbestos cancer, at the age of 58. He had been exposed to asbestos whilst, as a 17 year old, helping their uncle build a new piggery and asbestos panels were being cut for roofing requirements.

Janice says, "Mesothelioma specialists say it only takes one fibre to be inhaled and it will lie in the lining of the lung for many years before manifesting itself in this atrocious disease. I witnessed someone I love suffer shocking, intolerable pain. Let's work towards eliminating the cause of this preventable disease and in the meantime more effective treatment.

There are so many wonderful organisations all looking for financial help, it is almost embarrassing to be asking for your support, but if you are able to back me I would be so very, very grateful. I will pedal faster with you behind me."

To support Janice, visit her fundraising page http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JaniceHoughtonWallace

Stephen was diagnosed with Mesothelioma at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. It was there that Janice was taught how to look after him because the latest treatment had not reached the rural parts of Scotland she lived in but it was essential that he lived with her.

Papworth Hospital has an uncommonly great influence on the family, bringing both happy and sad times.

Janice and Stephen's grandfather was badly gassed in the trenches in France in WW1 but survived and was sent to Papworth Hospital, Cambridge on his return to this country.

At that time Papworth was a tuberculosis hospital and Dr. Varrier Jones pioneered fresh air and fresh produce for the patients as a way of treating this disease and other respiratory problems. When their grandfather was recovering he was asked if he would start up a poultry farm at Papworth so they could have fresh eggs, as they already had their own fruit and vegetable gardens and they realised that he was indeed a poultry farmer. This he did and there are a few seconds film of him in the East Anglian Film Archives feeding poultry.

Then the grandparents were given a wooden bungalow on the hospital estate in which to live and that's where Janice's mother was born. She was the first baby to be born at Papworth Hospital so Dr. Varrier Jones asked the new parents if they would call her Una, which they did, and now that is Janice's middle name.