Day 11 10 May 2026
I managed my longest (so far this year) bike ride yesterday, with the most hills. This was 26 miles with 554 metres of ascent. On top of a bruising gym session on Wednesday, I really thought I’d overdone it. There was no part of either leg that wasn’t screaming at me for a good few hours afterwards, but it did eventually pass and I’m fine now. I have to say that I’ve been very lucky with the weather this year. It was bright and sunny with only a little bit of rain. I even cycled past some sheep dog trials in Launde and stopped to watch while I had a snack.
You can sponsor my bike ride here.
Other people who have lost close relatives at an early age will understand the motivation for starting a trust. For us, there were two main reasons.
First because it was important to keep Alice’s name alive. It was inconceivable that such zest for life and vitality would simply disappear. We thought of a few different ideas related to things that people would remember Alice for. Since she loved the sport of fencing, we debated raising money to support young competitive fencers or sponsoring an annual fencing competition.
Secondly, we wanted to ensure that what happened to Alice did not happen to other young women. Alice’s death was so senseless and preventable. To me, it seemed that educating people about the dangers of stalking would mean that future victims, friends of victims, perpetrator and friends of perpetrators would all be in a position to help if they knew what they were dealing with. Not to mention the improved support from professionals, be they police, CPS, judiciary or victim support services that could be given. I spent endless sleepless nights thinking this through, sometimes, in the confused early mornings, believing that I had managed to save Alice after all. And then being faced with losing her all over again when the grim truth came back with the morning light.
I think we were unanimous in agreeing on trying to prevent stalking and controlling behaviour as being the aim of our trust. It was important to us to try and help save the lives of people in similar situations to those that Alice found herself in. But rather wonderfully, the other strand also exists because there is in fact an Alice Ruggles Memorial Fencing Competition that was started by a group of her close fencing friends and run by the University of Leicester Fencing Club. I hope that those people realise how much difference that has made to us. We have attended every single one and the atmosphere is lovely, bringing back the feeling of when Alice was alive and enabling us to remember something about Alice that was not related to her horrible death.
Starting a trust is not as easy as it sounds. I think that many of the original trustees were just a bit railroaded into helping us. However, they did an amazing job. In fact, all our trustees have been brilliant, contributing much more than could normally be expected.
We had to decide which of the five different charity types we needed, starting with a “Charitable trust” and then converting to a “Charitable incorporated organisation” when we started employing staff. We had to decide on our objectives and the number of trustees. On the one hand, for me, having to make all these decisions while wading through the fallout from Alice’s death and the inevitable stress of the impending trial felt almost overwhelming at times. Yet, in a strange way, it was also a way to keep a focus and prevent me from lapsing into despair. Paul Johnson, a graphic designer in the village volunteered his expertise to help design a logo and advise us on creating a strapline. We really had no idea, but he focussed on some lovely photos of Alice taken with a turtle in Sri Lanka and suggested this might form the basis of a suitable logo, as a turtle’s shell could be seen as protective. Alice’s cousin Reece designed the turtle, and the strapline became the deliberately ambiguous “putting an end to stalking”. We wanted to ensure that stalking was stopped when it was happening to an individual but ultimately prevent it from ever happening to anyone.
