Follow the teams progress online here

The inspiration for the trip came to team leader, Laura Housden, when she saw her teachers, Mr Merry and Mr Hodgson run from to school – some 14.5 miles – in aid of Sport Relief.  Also by watching the bi-annual Sport Relief in which a bunch of celebrities cycled the distance encouraged her to set herself the task. The determination, dedication, commitment, sheer bloody mindedness, will power and “to be fair the idiocy” of it gave her the idea and with the help of these same teachers and classmate Amanda Rulton, she hopes to become one of a very few teenagers who can say they’ve cycled the length of the country.

It was her idea to support the charity Malaria No More UK because although she has done many fundraising activities for local charities and organisations she wanted her efforts this time to count on a global scale.  She was shocked to learn that each year 850,000 people are killed by a preventable and treatable disease and that for £5 a life saving bed net can be bought and delivered to a family in protecting a mother and child for up to 5 years. Every 45 seconds a child dies from Malaria. Malaria is the greatest killer of children in the world. 1 million people die each year. 3'000 children die each day. 250 million cases occur each year.