Cycle around North Leitrim lake raises thousands for North West Stop

Over €5000 was raised for North West Stop during the Lap of the Lake cycle that took place on the 23rd of August, starting from Askill community centre.

The event saw 110 cyclists hopping on their bikes to complete the 32km long lap around Leitrim’s most northern lake, Lough Melvin, with laps running from 8am in the morning to 7pm in the evening.

This was the revival of the event that was an annual occurrence from 2014 to 2019, and organisers hope it will be the first of many more to come, aiding various charities like North West Stop every year.

READ MORE: South Leitrim school faces teacher loss if they can't find one more student

The cheque for €5040  was handed over by organiser John Rooney from Ballyshannon to North West Stop’s Nicola O'Connor at Askill community centre on Monday evening. 

O’Connor said: “It's a fantastic amount of money to be raised for a cycle event. We've gone extremely busy in the last five years, our expenses have grown from 30,000, we'll say, five years ago, up to about 145,000 this year.”

READ MORE: GoFundMe launched by Leitrim woman for lifelong friend reaches over €100k in just four days

Events like this are extremely important for the volunteer run organisation that helps people suffering mental health crisises around the north west to be able to run their services without receiving government funding.

“Our service is available, and we don't have much of a waiting list. I suppose the thing about our service is our counsellors are dotted across the north-west, so somebody phones in to access our service, we'll match them to a suitable counsellor within the needs of the person and match them to as close an area geographically as is possible.”