Wallace PE teacher Paddy Harrower leaves legacy of gruelling cycling challenge for wife and sister-in-law

Andrea Harrower, 48, from Dromara, and her sister Cathy Booth, 46, from Hillsborough, will set out to #PedalThePeriphery of Northern Ireland – a journey of 480 that they aim to complete in 48 hours. ​

The idea for the challenge came from Andrea’s late husband Paddy just five days before he died. The former PE teacher from Wallace High School and sports fanatic lived for just 14 weeks after his diagnosis on Easter Sunday last year.

Presenting late, his symptoms included indigestion and pain in the upper abdomen.

Wanting "something positive” to come from a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, Paddy challenged his wife and sister-in-law to take on the endurance event to support local pancreatic cancer charity NIPANC and raise both funds and awareness.

The money raised will go into research in memory of Paddy and a school friend of Cathy’s, Natalie Wilson who died, age 40 from the disease, leaving behind three young children.

Andrea, a personal trainer, said: “Cycling was so important to Paddy – his self-devised challenges and other official events at home and abroad. He used the bike to get to work and on family holidays.

“During his illness he set himself his own challenges as a reason ‘to get out of bed until the day he died’.

"As a family, we and our two sons, Fraser (19) and Alex (15), and my sister and brother did a final ride out from home with him only a couple of weeks before he passed away.

“His motto was, ‘I’m not living with cancer, cancer is living with me and I’m taking it for a ride’.”

During the two-day, clockwise cycle around Northern Ireland, the sisters are adopting the NIPANC charity slogan #TimeMatters to continue raising public awareness about the need to understand the symptoms of the disease and seek early diagnosis and treatment.

A third hashtag, #IBlamePaddy is also being introduced to inject some fun into fundraising.

Andrea explained: “#IBlamePaddy came about when people started finding out he was terminally ill.

"Friends and family felt they had no excuse but to join in some of the things he was doing including cold water swimming and kayaking.

"I don’t think he realised the impact he had on people. He was a modest man who wouldn’t like too much attention, but we think Paddy would be secretly pleased that the hashtag can be used by anyone fundraising to literally blame him on any crazy thing they do, to raise money and awareness for this important cause.”

Cathy, a former Director at BDO who now runs her own business consultancy, said: “Within five years, I not only lost Paddy, an incredible brother-in-law but also one of my school friends Natalie of 30-years to this devastating disease.

"Andrea and I are on a mission to raise awareness and fund vital research so other people don’t have to go through what we have.

"We want as many people involved in fundraising as possible and will be talking to schools, rugby and cycling/sports clubs along the route about how they can be part of our journey and #IBlamePaddy too.”

She added: “For us, this had to be an endurance challenge, given what we have both personally experienced. We know, no matter what physical and mental distress and pressure we put on ourselves during this challenge, it is absolutely nothing compared to what someone on a pancreatic cancer journey is facing.”

NIPANC’s Chairperson, Ivan McMinn MBE said: “We will be supporting Andrea and Cathy every push of the pedal on this epic cycle around the perimeter of NI. The difficulty of this challenge cannot be underestimated but the good it will do will be enormous. On Friday, may the road rise to meet you and the wind be at your back.”

The #PedalThePeriphery event will start at the gates of Ormeau Park in Belfast tomorrow, where George Ezra will be playing at the Belsonic Music Festival.

Paddy adopted the singer’s uplifting ‘Green Green Grass’ song during his illness. It was later played at his funeral.

The pair will be followed on the ride by Andrea’s recently restored 1974 purple VW Beetle which will act as a support vehicle. Unroadworthy, it was repaired, free-of-charge, by master technician Mark Strutt, previously accredited through Volkswagen. His brother John died of the cancer three years ago.

Paddy’s bike will be mounted on top of the VW and will make the metaphorical journey along with Cathy and Andrea.

The first audit in over 10 years into pancreatic cancer in NI has revealed there has been an 86% increase in confirmed cases, rising from 152 in 2001 to 283 in 2020.

The audit was funded by NIPANC with the audit work undertaken by the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry (NICR), Queen’s University Belfast in partnership with HPB clinical staff in the Belfast Trust.

Its findings have prompted Mark Taylor, NI Director of the Royal College of Surgeons and Consultant Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Cancer Surgeon to call for a strengthening of local pancreatic cancer services as “incidences are likely to continue to rise” due to multifactorial reasons such as increasing age, obesity and diabetes.

Professor Taylor, also a trustee of NIPANC, said: “We can see on the ground, how pancreatic cancer referrals are increasing, and we must strengthen our services in response.”