GETTING into training for once-in-a-lifetime challenge is Merkinch woman Bette McArdle. The semi-retired journalist, who lives in Telford Road, is aiming to go on a 250-mile sponsored cycle tour of Cuba next March and has already been working on her fitness levels. “It is more years than I care to remember since I did any serious cycling, but when I saw the poster at the Community Centre I thought ‘That’s for me’,” she said, adding, “I’ve always wanted to go to Cuba.”

The event is in aid of research into the health of women in childbirth and new babies. Mrs McArdle, a mother of six grown children and grandmother of nine, is the most northerly of 100 women taking part in the Challenge - only three others are from Scotland. The only man on the event is expedition leader Professor Robert Winston of TV fame.

Wine buff Jilly Goolden will also be taking part in the trip which will take the intrepid women from Havana to Trinidad across some of Cuba’s roughest country roads. Mrs McArdle has started fund-raising and she is very grateful to her very first company sponsor, Bikes of Inverness in Grant Street, who donated a special long-distance saddle.

She bought her bike there a couple of years back but hadn’t used it much until now. “I am paying all my own expenses, so anything I raise will all be for the charity.”