A wondrous 104 year old has proved age is just a number after completing 10 miles on her exercise bike and a 100-mile walk.
Nan Aitken signed up to the Smile Centre’s Adventure with Dementia 2023 challenge of cycling one mile a week for 10 weeks and walking the John Muir Way from Helensburgh to Dunbar to raise awareness about the importance of keeping active in your senior years.
The challenge is part of the People’s Project campaign which the Smile Centre has entered to help raise money for a disability vehicle for Nan’s community.
The centre – based at Middleton Hall Nursing Home in Uphall – needs the public to vote for them to help the charity win £20,000. Smile director Lynn Smith said Nan has always been fit and active but “blossomed” when she started to attend the centre.
And she said the pensioner, who lived in her own home until she was 102, is a great example of how keeping the mind and body busy can keep us all feeling young.
She said: “Nan is an amazing woman. She’s still on her feet and able to have conversation.
“The only thing is her hearing, which is a bit low, but other than that she’s top notch. She’s doing things people half her age wouldn’t be able to do.
“She came to us during lockdown and just blossomed with all the activities. She’s always been a very active person among her family and she’s always been very family-orientated.
“She’s a great example of what the Smile Centre can do for people.”
Lynn urged everyone to vote for the Smile Centre, adding: "Our best lives are lives that we live as a community where we have social interaction, where we are able to do the things we would like to do and where the support is available for us to be able to do that.
"SMILE means small, meaningful interactions link everyone, it links every one within the community, from the children to the grandparents to the daughters and sons in between.
"Smile's Project for 2023 is called Adventure with Dementia, and it's to fundraise for a community bus for the residents of West Lothian.
"People with dementia often stay at home all the time, and that's got a lot to do with the fact that they feel insecure to be going out and about.
"So having their own vehicle to do this gives them a safe environment to be transported in, it allows them to go with family and friends and to make new memories that they wouldn't do within their own home.
"Because we have one vehicle at the moment, which is amazing, it's changed life for so many people but it's made us realise that we are still so restricted in how few people we can take out.
"We have a lot of volunteers who are so willing to be able to take people out.
We just don't have that transport in place yet.
"The reason that The People's Projects is so important to us as we are a small community, so actually to continually ask people for funding locally or not is very difficult and seeing the changes in people when they actually get out and actually go and involve in activities or are actually just managing to make it up to the hospital for that appointment.
"It just changes their day, changes their life and just breaks down so many other barriers that they're facing as well.
"We can't change the world for everybody all at once, but we can change the world for a few right now.
We need your vote to keep our elderly community active.
To vote for the Smile Centre visit here
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