Dear all,
I'm pleased to inform you that the Howie Griffiths cycling machine rolled in to John O'Groats on Thursday 29th April, 3 days and 19 hours after leaving Lands End!! It was incredibly satisfying to achieve our target and to finish 5 hours early was even better.
It was every bit as hard as we imagined with some incredibly long days in the saddle (22 hrs on day 3 was easily the worst). However your kind donations made it all worth while. We are now over the £2500 mark and only need another £500 to reach our £3000 target. So we cannot thank you all enough for your support and generosity. Every penny will make a massive difference to Alzheimer's Society.
Our mileage for each day were as follows:
Day 1 Lands End- Monmouth = 230
Day 2 Monmouth - Penrith = 220
Day 3 Penrith - Kingussie = 233
Day 4 Kingussie - John O' Groats = 166
TOTAL = 849
Here are a few other key stats:
1) 42,000 calories burned per rider.
2) 69 hours on the bike.
3) Average speed = 16.4mph
4) Average speed including stops etc = 12.39 mph
5) Crashes = 1 (Mr Howie ending upside down with his bike in a tree!!)
Many thanks to my cousin Suzie Balfour and Charlotte Hardie for putting us up in Penrith and Kingussie. You cannot imagine how nice it was to have some good food, shower and a bed after such tiring days.
The real unsung hero of this trip was our support car driver, the delightful Mr Gareth Crockett. He took a week of holiday to join us and did it all for free. As well as this he cooked for us, kept our spirits up and was on the ball with absolutely everything. He didnt even moan once at what must have been a tedious and boring job!!To top things off he then drove through the night back to London to get us home for some well deserved rest. Absolutely world class!
As usual the reason for most challenges like these is to raise some hard cash for charity. For this challenge the charity chosen is The Alzheimer's Society. Earlier this year Dan's grandmother sadly passed away. She had been an Alzheimers sufferer for at least 15 years which robbed her of her way of life, and her family of their grandmother.
The Alzheimers Society are so close to finding a cure for this extremely common disease. Your money would help scientists to develop a cure and hopefully rid the world of it completely. Many of us are likely to get it as we approach old age, so lets nip this one in the bud before we get there...
Please note that 15% of all monies raised will help the boys to fund this trip. If you are not happy with this then please do not sponsor
Many thanks and your support is greatly appreciated.
Dan and Tom
AKA, The Steam Team.
