A PAIR of heart surgeons will be swapping scalpels for handlebars as they embark on a charity bike ride to Paris.

Nidal Bittar and Andrew Duncan who work at the Lancashire Cardiac Centre will be spending three days in the saddle as they ride the 240 miles from London to Paris.

The pair, who have operated on and treated hundreds of patients from East Lancashire, are raising money for the centre in Blackpool, in memory of a colleague who died of prostate cancer last year.

Mr Bittar, a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon, said: “We’ll be doing nearly 80 miles a day so I would imagine we would be very tired doing it. At the moment I am not too confident as I haven’t done a lot of training, but hopefully we will do it – we’ve got through worse."

Two years ago, the cycling duo pedalled across the Middle Eastern country of Jordan to raise nearly £15,000 for charities which support the Lancashire Cardiac Centre.

“In Jordan it was different," said Mr Bittar. "We rode between 60 and 70 miles a day but we had the heat to contend with and we went from 400 meters below sea level to 1,200 meters above it. It was painful.”

For their upcoming cycle ride in September, Mr Bittar, 47, and Mr Duncan, 57, aim to raise £5,000 which will be split between the Heart of Gold Charitable Fund and Prostate Cancer UK.

The Heart of Gold Charitable Fund is a division of Blue Skies Hospitals Fund – the charity for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – which supports the Lancashire Cardiac Centre, based at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

Mr Duncan, who is also a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and has previously worked at clinics in Blackburn, said: “We all still feel very sad and shocked at the loss of our good colleague last year. We feel that by doing this bike ride we will be keeping his memory alive.

“The Heart of Gold Charitable Fund is also very important to us because it helps us to drive innovation and research in the Cardiac Centre which will benefit our patients.”