2300 miles, in a car valued at £1000 or less, with a target of raising over £1000 plus for Little Miracles Children’s Charity? Sounds like something that Freemasons would get involved in. And that is exactly why three intrepid teams from three lodges in The Province joined another 30 teams to take up the challenge of the inaugural ‘Pistons to Places’ Rally. The rally was the brainchild of St Ives Businessman Nick Jones, who tragically lost his young daughter to Aicardi Syndrome at the age of 7 some years ago and has been taking on challenges to raise money for children’s charities ever since. Having taken part in a similar rally a couple of years ago, he decided to organise his own and donate to Little Miracles, based in Peterborough.
The Freemasons teams were: Chequered Chancers - Ritchie Juene (Spelhoe), Lukask Kusiak (De La Pre), Cosmon Popescu (Spelhoe) and Barry Thomas (Spelhoe); The Dark Blue Brothers - Malcolm Stevens (Sothius), Richard Koronowsk (Sothius); Team 67 - Mark Wadsworth (Sothius), Darrell Preston (Sothius).
The brief was simple, buy a car for £1000 or less, raise over £1000 per car, travel from St Ives to Pisa, Italy, and back again. And so, what started as a pipedream to raise £20,000 with a handful of teams, grew to including 33 cars. Setting off at 1am on Friday 26th June 2026 from St Ives Rugby Club, ‘Pistons to Places’ travelled to Dover, via Ferry to Calais, on to Belgium, over the Alps and the Stelvio Pass, an overnight stop in Lucca and into Pisa on Sunday, before returning back to St Ives via Tuscany and Dijon by 6pm on Monday 29th June.
At the time of writing, the challenge has raised over £75,000, with more coming in before the cut-off date of July 31st, with the three teams from The Province contributing £17,000 of the total – an amazing achievement by all involved.
Four cars didn’t make it home and were left in Austria, Italy & France.
The teams collectively travelled over 61,000 miles.
And it does not stop there! Next year’s challenge is already being promoted – it will be St Ives to Venice in June of next year & promises to be bigger, raising more money for Little Miracles. The destination is a closely guarded secret; all we can say is ‘Anyone for Venice?’. Watch this space.
To celebrate the team's achievements, they are holding a Little Miracles Ball, to be held on the 17th of October in St Ives. For tickets & information please contact,
If you wish to take part next year, please contact:
It is still not to late to donate to this year’s challenge.
To give money to the individual teams, go to the main ‘Just Giving’ page by scanning the QR code on the poster. Alternatively, go to this page DONATE
Little Miracles Charity has facilities and equipment at Bretton, Peterborough, which allows youngsters to enjoy a sensory environment and specialise in providing advice, guidance, support, activities, training and safe places to any family that has a child with an additional need, disability or life-limiting condition. This includes providing support before they are diagnosed and from birth to 25.