McCann embarks on charity cycle in bid to raise awareness of missing persons
Kate McCann is cycling from Edinburgh to London on a 500-mile ride to raise funds for the Missing People charity.
The mother of missing Madeleine McCann set off from the Scottish capital on Saturday (13 June) on the five-day challenge which will pass through Newcastle, York, Nottingham and Northampton before crossing the finish line in London on Wednesday.
Madeleine was three years old when she disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in Portugal's Algarve in 2007, becoming one of the most famous cases of its kind.
Last year, Kate, who is an ambassador for the charity, launched a Child Rescue Alert alongside the mother of murdered schoolgirl April Jones, which has seen more than 250,000 people sign up to receive alerts when a child is feared to have been abducted.
She said: "The night that our little girl was taken from her bed, we mistakenly presumed that an alert would have gone out immediately to the public to get as many eyes and ears involved in the search as possible.
"But no such system existed to get a message out into the public domain quickly and recruit help.
"Although a simple idea, Child Rescue Alert is a potentially life-saving system, the success of which is reliant on us, as members of the public, to sign up to receive free alerts when a child goes missing.”
The alert, funded by the People's Postcode Lottery, uses social media, text messages, email and digital billboards across the UK in addition to traditional broadcast media to issue alerts.
