'It's an honour to give bikes to kids with cancer'

Mike Grisenthwaite was a triathlete and loved cycling when he was diagnosed with blood cancer in 2000.

His son was just two weeks old at the time and it was the start of five years of treatment for the disease for the dad from Kineton, Warwickshire.

Despite the diagnosis, he continued to do what he loved - between tests and treatments, he set personal bests in his sport, took on distance runs and completed triathlons.

It was during a period of isolation before he had a bone marrow transplant that he said he had time to think - what came from that was a charity which uses cycling to help others going through the disease.

Grisenthwaite started Cyclists Fighting Cancer in 2005.

The group gives children and young people living with cancer new, lightweight bikes, specially adapted trikes, cycling-related equipment and support.

"The bikes we give are brand new, because part of it is the delight of getting a new bike," he told the BBC.

"These kids have been in treatment for so long and can miss out on big stages of development.

"It's a simple thing, a bike, but it's turned out to be so much more important to them.

"Kids on bikes, it's a right of passage."

After starting the operation from his kitchen table, the charity now has four shops - in Stratford-upon-Avon, Cheltenham, London and Manchester.

Old bikes are donated to the stores, where they are overhauled and resold.

Alongside this, they sell cycling equipment with the money going into buying new bikes for youngsters.

The charity has given out more than 10,000 bikes over 21 years and they are all delivered by the team.

"It is an honour to do it and also a delight to see the joy on the faces of the children," Grisenthwaite said.

The charity has helped countless people over the 20 years it has been running, and Grisenthwaite was recently celebrated for the work he has done so far.

He was lured to the shop in London to do some "internal filming" - and had no idea what was actually planned.

"I was happily doing the spiel and next minute I saw Alexander Armstrong pop up in the corner of my eye," he said.

"He said: 'I've got a flat tyre'.

"I knew nothing about it, my team and everybody around, it was a gotcha moment."

Armstrong was there with BBC One's The One Show, as part of their "One Big Thank You" series.

He played Grisenthwaite a series of videos of children who have benefited from the charity as well as hospital teams and people working at the charity shops.

Then the biggest surprise - a video message from Sir Chris Hoy, a moment he said was "off the scale".

"He's going through his own journey with cancer and I was just so touched," he said.

"It was amazing exposure for the charity as well."

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