A DAD cycled 1,000 miles and has raised £65,000 in memory of his two baby daughters.

Tom Ungi, from Monks Risborough, completed the John O'Groats to Land's End route with a team of seven family and friends.

And every day he thought of his daughters, Chloe Annabel, who was stillborn on April 13, 2011 due to group B Strep (GBS) infection and Gracie Mae, born prematurely on the June 13, 2012 but tragically died on the July 2.

Tom, 35, said: "One of the most lovely things was we were riding for eight to nine hours riding a bike every day. I was with my friends and there was the usual banter with the boys.

"But when you stop that you have a huge amount of time to think about the girls and be very close to them.

"We have been through so much pain over the last couple of years, it was a peaceful time to think about them in a really special way."

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the UK’s most common cause of life-threatening infection in newborn babies.

Carried by one in four pregnant women, the bacteria can be passed from mother to baby around birth and, without preventative medicine, an estimated one out of every 300 babies born to women carrying GBS would become seriously ill - approximately 700 sick babies a year, of whom 75 would die and another 40 would suffer serious on-going health issues.

Gracie died of an infection, but they decided not to investigate further. Both Chloe and Gracie are laid to rest in the same grave.

Tom and his wife, Rachel, have a four-year-old daughter called Ruby, and Rachel is 25 weeks pregnant.

He said: "My wife has been a huge inspiration because of the way she has coped. She is pregnant at the moment.

"The courage to do that again is exceptional to me. Riding a bike for 1,000 miles is nothing in comparison. "I feel in awe of her."

The charity, Group B Strep Support, campaigns for much greater awareness of this infection among parents-to-be and wants to see every pregnant woman in the UK given accurate information about group B Strep as a routine part of her antenatal care, coupled with a national screening programme offering testing for GBS at 35 to 37 weeks of pregnancy.

Tom said: "It is so important for us both to raise awareness to remember the girls. Also the Group B Strep support group are wonderful. "Without them I would never have known what killed my daughter and how to deal with that."

Through the awareness work they have done three mums discovered they had GBS following help from the support group their babies survived. You can visit the Ungi’s web page http://chloegracie.webplus.net/home.html