Update:

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me.  We’ve raised over £1,000 for Jospice which has by leaps and bounds massively exceeded my expectations. It was quite an adventure.  Thank you very, very much.

Fast Facts:

Total Milage: 220 miles

Start time: Thursday,

Arrived at Towcester Travelodge: Thursday,

Departed Towcester Travelodge: Friday

Finish time: Friday,

Time taken: 27hrs 15 mins (excluding stop-over 19hrs)

Quicker by train: Yes

Number of Punctures: 2

Number of New tyres required: 1

Number of expletives when changing inner tube in the rain, with cold, numb hands and rubbish tools: Several

Number of wrong turns taken: 5

Fuel:                1 medium Americano pizza (5 slices for tea, 3 for breakfast),

                        2 Marathons (Snickers)

                        1 Full English (but Veggie) breakfast

                        6 Runners’ Gel bars (weird things that you eat when you’re running low on carbs)

                        1 Dairy Milk bar

                        Plenty of Corporation Pop with a sprinkling of Isotonic powder.

Reflections:                                                                 

§         The inventor of the internal combustion engine was on to something.

§         It’s all well and good praising the Roman road building programme but their straight lines had no regard for hills.

§         When the going gets tough ’s face and the Birdie song used in unison as inspirational tools do not work.

§         If you wait just seconds after being blinded by oncoming traffic on the A5 at night you will once again be able to see the white line on the side of the road but still nothing else.

§         When numbness in frozen toes over the course of 3 hours has spread to your whole foot and you’re not sure whether you can only get frostbite in sub-zero temperatures pull into The Old Green Man in Little Brickhill where they’ll let you thaw out at the open fire, give money to your cause and put marshmallows in your hot chocolate.

§         In civilised society it is considered odd to take off socks, trainers and T-shirt to drape over a radiator as you eat your breakfast in a trendy, bustling town centre cafe.  If said clothes are so wet and heater so hot that a steam cloud forms above you as you tuck into your veggie sausages (very nice actually) then this is generally considered a further faux pas.  The pleasant folk at The Damn Fine Cafe, were good-natured enough to overlook these social niceties.

§         If, near the end of a long and difficult journey home you begin to visualise crossing the finish line and turning into your front garden, to be greeted by your proud and cheering parents try to time your homecoming so that you don’t clash with Dr Who otherwise you may only get to be congratulated by your mother about half an hour later (“he’s very good this new one”).

 

Original Message

Hello and thank you for taking the time to visit my Fundraising page.  I’m trying to raise money for ’s Hospice which does great work caring for terminally ill people in Merseyside and giving them dignity and comfort and extending vital support to their families. Any amount you can donate will be very much appreciated.

to Bike Ride:

On April Fool’s day 2010 I will step out of work, hop on my bike and cycle home for Easter – to Formby - the land of my youth.  

In preparation for this I’ve been to Google, printed off some directions and drawn a couple of maps so hopefully I won’t get too lost.  If I manage to follow my scribbles and the predicted weather of hail-stones and gales doesn’t destroy my scraps of paper then the route should take me a tidy 210 miles and is thus ridiculously further than I have ever cycled before.

Indeed, if this was a marathon then my training for it - which has consisted purely of commuting to work - would be the equivalent of doing a single mile run several times a week.  I understand that this is considered, by some, to be woefully insufficient.  

Also, ordinarily for such a distance, either a road, tourer or racer-bike would be the more appropriate option providing, as it would, sleekness, lightness, aerodynamic technology, high-end componentry, near frictionless motion – the epitome of man and machine’s silent efficiency.  It would be more unusual (and cheaper) to use my 4 year-old cranking mountain bike with nibbled seat and rusting cogs. I’ll obviously be relying on my trusty Steed.  

Strangely, I’ve not been able to convince anyone else to cycle from my work to my home this weekend so I’ll be yellow jersey for most of it and am hoping to get at least a top four position (more difficult in Liverpool than you might imagine).  Downside is there’s no one to slipstream behind.

The plan is to make it to Towcester on the Thursday night and then plough on to Formby from sunrise Friday.  If the worst happens and I get a puncture or am by some other means waylaid, then my secondary Friday night target will be leafy Wilmslow.  If I use this option then it will add a further 15 miles to the journey and I’ll complete it on the Saturday via .

Presently I am feeling quietly positive about the challenge; the chance to get a bit of exercise, to see a bit of our green and pleasant land, to have a chat with local people in little towns that have been forgotten by the snaking dual-carriage-ways and to raise a little bit of money for a good cause.  But, if I find myself in the frigid greyness of a sleet storm, next to a lay-by, near an abandoned and toppled-over Portaloo on the A5, drenched by weather-blinded juggernauts with my bike upside down fixing a puncture having already seen the last of my rain-soaked Little Chef beef burger pan-caked into the tarmac by a meandering old lady in a Nissan Micra, I may view the situation differently – I may view it as a cautionary tale to be more mindful of things you say you will do when in a pub on a sunny afternoon in July.