Charity Cycle

We drove down to London in the Freelander which was my 'support car' driven by my ex crew mate Owen Bottle.

We left at 1am and basicly drove the route in reverse arriving at Big Ben around 4am. By the time we'd unpacked the car and set up the bike it was 4.15am so I set off into the night..

My first landmark being "turn left at London Bridge" as that leads onto the A10 eventually but somehow I missed it altogether and spent the next 20 mins and 4 miles riding around in circles eventually ending up at Barbican.

Luckily Owen guided me back onto the A10 (thank god for mobiles and the A-Z) and I was away and making good progress through Tottenham and up the Cambridge road getting to Cheshunt for about 6am.

I had probably gone too fast to soon because by the time I got to Ware in Herts my right knee was very painful. Owen kept on top of this with more breaks then we had planned but it did the trick. When I got to Royston I was joined by Station Officer Rod from Beds and Herts Ambulance service, a keen cyclist himself. I had only met Rod a few weeks before when he came out on his bike to observe the Kings Lynn CRU as he is keen to set up his own CRU for Luton Airport.

Having another rider there certainly made the journey fly by as we made Cambridge by 11.00.

Throughout the journey I was called by KLFM for a progress update live on air which certainly raised awareness of what I was doing. We took mainly back roads through ELY and Littleport, up the A10 via Ten Mile bank, weather was perfect, made for a really pleasent ride. At some point we had to bite the bullet and take on the A10, which is in parts pretty scary due to the high speed of traffic on a single lane carrigeway. We made very good progress from Downham to Lynn, taking our final stop and KLFM call from the Tesco car park at the Hardwick at around 3pm.

Despite the climb up Knights hill, we were in Snettisham in no time, going via Sandringham. We had a Police/PCSO cycle escort through Dersingham arriving at Ingoldisthorpe Primary at approx 4:30pm, 12 hours and 15 minutes after starting at Big Ben.

To my suprise there was a good reception for me made up of teachers, pupils and family and friends which made it worth all the effort. To date weve raised £1900 to go towards the replacement of the 30 year old Portakabins with a double Pine Cabin from Finland.