"Raise A smile" 

                                                               "Help Those, Who Help Us, Give A bit back!"

Hi everyone!,first i'd like to thank everyone who has donated on and off line.The grand total will be displayed on this page before the end of september.The current page total is just from sponsor sheets and on line donations but we have a number of H4H collection buckets in and around rotherham doing very well plus the one we took on our ride.

 The ride its self was a great success!,there are a number of pictures from the ride on this page,if you want to see the rest they're all on facebook.Just add me 'carl boardman' and you can check them out.

 We set off on friday 28th of august at half seven an hour and half behind schedual due to unforseen problems. This being the first day everybody felt good, moral was high and despite the awfull weather and alot of hills we managed to cover about 125 miles which got us to a place called bedford,which is not far off luton.This was great as it only left around 130 miles to folkstone.

 Because of the distance covered on the previous day everybody was a little bit sore and tired, but very optimistic.The weather was fantastic too!.We had a brilliant start to the day everything was going fantastic...then we hit the centre of london.Because we were following the bicycle route our support van which was drove by 70 year old Terry Boardman,massive thanks to him, couldnt get through.So after going round in circles for half an hour, we decided to part companies and meet up on the other side.This cost us about an hour, but  we got stuck  in and went for it!.Riding through london was horrible, stopping and stating for the traffic lights, having to share the bus lanes with the buses and there BLIND!  drivers.The ordinairy traffc wasn't much better, we had a few close shaves.On the plus side the route took us past tottenham's home ground, and it was match day.Cycling through the crowds telling everybody what and where we were going was a great buzz!.Anyway,we managed to get through london and meet our support team at the other side.We stopped for a quick break and our support team told us it was only about 40 miles to folkstone, it was about five o'clock by this time.After little thought we decided to go for it .We arrived at folkstone at about 9 o'clock,which was brilliant we had two whole days to cover 170miles, the distance from Calias to Paris.But then disaster!. We were that determand to get to folkstone we didn't book a hotel we justed hoped to get one.... but we didnt!.We had to sleep in the van,all four of us, with all the equiptment and the bikes.There were no facilities for a shower and we only had a few snacks in the van for our tea.It was a real low point,everyone was tired,smelly and tempers we short.

 The third day was always going to be the most difficult.We all woke up really uncomfortable, cold ,hungry and in real need of a shower!.But we were ready to cross the channel,its times like that when you just have to think why and who your doing for,thats the only thing that got us up that morning. Once we were sorted we jumped on the earliest ferry we could this diddnt leave while 12:30pm which was another massive blow because we had wasted all the morning but there was nothing we could do after all it was a bank holiday weekend so it was extremely busy.We arrived in calias at 2pm,so we got straight on the bikes and set off.We only got down the road and we hit the centre.All the roads were blocked we could't  believe it there was some sort of carnival on and the support van couldn't get through and we couldn't use the motor ways.So we had to split once more.This time it was an absolute dissaster!,the support van got round and parked up mean while me and shez on the bikes got lost and i mean lost.None of us speak french the scale of our map was no good it only diplayed the main roads. To make it worse all our euros were in the van so we could't even buy a better map.It took us 3 and a half hours to get to the van.We cycled 40 miles round calias at one point ended up 20 miles west in the wrong direction.We finally met back up with the support van and got back on track.By this time it was about  6o'clock.We had only travelled 25 miles south of calias!, all the hard work on the second day had been in vain.We were gutted.We decided to stop for the night as none of us had had a shower since friday night and it was now sunday evening. We hadn't had much sleep the night before either as we had to all squeeze in the van.

 The fourth and final day,145 miles to do.After a much needed shower and an early night we got up with one thing on our mind,PARIS! it was a long way we were absolutly shattered but there was no way we had come this far to fail.Out of all the four days this wa the longest hardest day.The sun was red hot the wind was strong and i'm sure france means 'alot of long horrible hills' in some foriegn language.We cycled from seven till 1pm had 45 mins break then arrived at paris at around 10 pm.It was the best feeling ever. We could hardly stand up but we found the energy to jump around laughing and shouting 'WE'VE DONE IT!'.It was such a buzz,what an achievement.Two ordinairy young men,hardly any specific training and we made it  from Rotherham to Paris in just four days despite all the problems.

Bring on the next challenge!

Thankyou so much to everybody who has supported us, you have been brilliant!!!!