Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

At sunrise on June 21st, myself and a bunch of like-minded idiots will head off from John O'Groats for a challenging journe through the length of this wonderful little island, hopefully making it to Land's End by sunrise on the 22nd June.

What makes this journey challenging you ask? Well, let me tell you, we plan to complete this on motorcycles costing no more than £300 , this does NOT buy you a lot of reliable motorcycle, more like a whole lot of trouble. Nonetheless, I for one am relishing the challenge and will be carrying gaffa tape, bits of wire, bottles of oil and as many spare parts I can safely carry.

 

The route avoids motorways, totalling roughly 906 miles in total.

 

Then we all have to ride home again!

 

 

Every little pound helps, as much as I would love to raise £1000, I appreciate that times are tight and every little pound will go towards making somebody's life and that of their families a whole lot better.

 

So dig deep people, it is for chariddeeee after all.

Here is a link to the website http://www.thelongestdaydownchallenge.co.uk/

 

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

 

OK folks, here is a wee update of where I am now.

This old bike has almost had me tearing my hair out at times. It has blown up several major electrical components (sonme twice!), but I eventually got to the bottom of that only for the fuel tap diaphragm to fail and cover my garage floor and me in fuel. Luckily I had a spare fuel tap and this sorted the problem out.

The bike has had an engine oil and filter change, transmision oil change, new spark-plugs, air filter etc, it was still running rough, so I sprayed about half a can of carb cleaner down the carrbs, it smoked a bit then ran quite good.

The fork seals where leaking, but I never had the time, or tools to do them. So I took them to the guys at www.dbsmotorbikes.co.uk who sorted them out for a very good price. They have also over the past wee while given me some pointers and advice about getting this old wreck running again.

So since I now had forks, a running engine, electrics where the smoke stayed inside the wires, I decided to tempt fate and took it in for MOT and it actually passed. I have ridden it a few times since and I am quietly confident now.

Another two businesses that I would like to thank are Ian at www.ianmurraybikesales.co.uk and the folks at www.bikemoversuk.co.uk. 

I asked Ian if he could help source a bike for the challenge, but I did find my own one first. Then he gave me the number for bikemoversuk who picked the bike up from Dover and dropped it off at my home in West Lothian in one rusty, dillapidated piece.

Now, as the time draws nearer, the enormity of the task has hit home. I just hope that the bike and I can last the total distance of almost 2000 miles, since I both have to ride to the start point and home from the end-point. So that's twice the country in a little under 4 days. What will break first, the bike or me?

I hope that some of you will follow us for a while through the live Twitter and Facebook updates during the event. I will try an resuscitate my Twitter account too for the purposes of updates at fuel and rest breaks.

Thanks to all of you once again for your support, both financial and moral.