14th Children's Magical Taxi Tour
Friday 5th October
The 14th Children's Magical Taxi Tour left London on Friday 5th October, this worthwhile annual Charity event is organized by the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers The tour takes around 200 seriously , and sadly sometimes terminally ill children in a fleet of London Taxi Cabs across the Channel to Disneyland Resort Paris for a three day weekend. The purpose is to give these children an alternative to hospitals, treatment, and pain.
They departed from Canary Wharf after the ‘Big Breakfast’ which some 1,000 + people attended including some very excited children being serenaded by the band of the Blues and Royals playing over their eggs and bacon. At 8:30 the ribbon was cut by the Sheriff of the City of London (the man in the attached images wearing the red coat). It was quite a sight some 100 taxis (including one of Cab Aid's!) accompanied by a police motorcycle escort, ambulances, AA vehicles + various support vehicles going away in a convoy to Dover, with sirens and horns blaring. At Dover a P&O sponsored ferry took them over to France, the French gendarmerie than escorted the column to Disneyland where the kids apparently had a fabulous time, looked after by the medical teams, parents, and of course the taxi drivers together with many volunteers from all over.
Cab Aid were pleased to be one of the many sponsors of this event, thanks to the generosity of our Directors. We also provided one of our new TX4s to go as well, which was greatly appreciated.
According to the organisers we spoke to after their return, the children all had a fabulous time at Disneyland with no serious incidents.
In a business as commercially focused as ours certainly is, it’s good to get a reality check sometimes, and see how easy, it is, when people and companies of a like mind get together, to bring some simple pleasure into young lives that are filled with suffering and pain.