Team of volunteers revving up every day to help save lives

Ruth Mosalski meets some of the 500 volunteers who offer their time free to help people they may never meet

- Ruth Mosalski

> Neil Prescott, chairman of Blood Bikes Wales

(Jonathan Myers)

WHATEVER the weather, whatever the day, all across Wales there are a group of people who you will find doing something inspiring.

There's every chance you've seen them - they're the ones travelling miles every year on their motorbikes marked 'Blood.

Not one of those you'll see - nor any of their colleagues behind the scenes - are paid. They all offer their skills and free time to help people they will often never meet.

The volunteers at Blood Bikes Wales are part of a charity courier service to the NHS, delivering blood samples, plasma, donated human milk, documents, and other items all over the country.

They have 22 bikes here in Wales and in 2024-25 the 500 or so volunteers completed just under 400,000 miles - not far off a return journey to the moon - and more than 7,000 jobs in total.

The charity works with six of Wales' seven health boards - Swansea Bay University Health Board, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, Hywel Dda, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, and Powys Teaching Health Board, but no day is the same.

Sometimes they are transporting notes between hospitals. Sometimes they're carrying blood samples to or from labs, moving donated breast milk, or dropping off medication to a patient at home to save them having to be in hospital.

They take things across Wales but when needed into England too.

While the riders are the most visible part of the whole operation volunteers don't need to be a motorcyclist to be involved.

Lesley Isaacs-Penny is the vice chair and one of the controllers the person tasked with getting the 15 or so riders on shift at any one time to the right place at the right time.