Three siblings from one of Yorkshire’s leading children’s attractions are cycling 240 miles from London to Yorkshire this weekend to raise funds for a ground-breaking new mental health initiative in Hong Kong.

The siblings all grew-up at Stockeld Park, outside Wetherby, and will be riding in memory of their brother, Captain Laurence Grant, who died last October having lost his own battle with mental health. Stockeld Park have teamed up with the mental health charity Mind Hong Kong, where Captain Grant was living when he died, to deploy a ‘virtual mental health counsellor’ powered by artificial intelligence.

The programme, called Help Me, is named after the charity Captain Grant was himself seeking to establish when he died, and seeks to use artificial intelligence to provide users with answers to complex mental health-related questions when human counsellors are unavailable.

 “This is an extremely exciting and potentially ground-breaking new project that could make a real difference to people struggling with their mental health all over the world, including here in Yorkshire”, said George Grant, the Estate Manager at Stockeld Park and one of the participants on the ride.

“The objective of the Help Me programme is not to replace human support, rather it is to provide an additional resource when human interaction is either unavailable or undesired for whatever reason. Artificial intelligence marks the future in so many areas of life, and it is very exciting that Stockeld Park is going to be part of that.”

The bike ride will commence on Friday at the offices of KMPG in Canary Wharf, which was where Captain Grant worked before moving to Hong Kong. Captain Grant had himself undertaken the same 240 mile route on foot in December 2016 to raise money for the veterans’ charity Walking With the Wounded.

Also cycling are Laurence Grant’s step-brother and sister Henry and Emily Pearson, along with two of Ms Pearson’s work colleagues.

Help Me is a project of the mental health charity Mind HK, the sister charity of Mind UK, being developed in conjunction with Stockeld Park. The programme is still in the concept phase and the website can be seen here: www.helpme-mindhk.com

George Grant, Laurence Grant’s elder brother, sits on the advisory board of Mind HK specifically with responsibility for the Help Me project.

Stockeld Park is an historic 2,000-acre estate situated between Harrogate and Wetherby owned by Peter Grant, the father of Laurence Grant.

Stockeld Park is well known for its Adventure Park, which welcomes over 150,000 visitors for a range of indoor and outdoor activities throughout the year. For more information, see www.stockeldpark.co.uk. Stockeld is also Yorkshire’s largest grower of Christmas Trees, with some half-a-million trees in the ground.