7 Days - Lands End to John O Groats

Tony Gresty is raising money for Stockdales

Participants: Tony Gresty / Nick Jones / Carolyne Jones

Story

Thanks to everyone for their support over the past few days as we covered the 913 miles of our ride. The texts and phone calls to Carolyne have been a great encouragement.

Carolyne is where I want to start. Without her amazing organisational and logistical ability we would not have been able to complete the event as easily as we did. (I do use the phrase “easily” with some reservation)

Carolyne managed to keep stocked with food, keep ahead of us, and get luggage etc into hotel rooms before we arrived etc. She also took over 750 pictures for me and 1 hour of video for her and Nick.

The ride was about the toughest thing I have done both physically and mentally. We both suffered from knee problems from day 2 or 3 as well as other physical issues such as back, arm, shoulder and pelvic bone problems.

We covered the following stages being on the road for approx 10-12 hours per day.

Lands End – Tiverton 148.5 miles

Tiverton – Hereford 122.5 miles

Hereford –Chorley 144.5 milrs

Chorley – Dumphries 135 miles

Dumphries – Inverary 108 miles (didn’t complete last 34 miles)

Inverary –CanonBridge 146.5 miles

BonarBridge – John O Goats 108 miles (didn’t do first 30 miles)

I am sure Nick will agree that it was an amazing experience covering such land marks as Dartmoor Prison, Severn Bridge, A6 between Kendal and Shap and the Scottish Highlands.

I also want to thank Nick for being so realistic about what we were doing. Without him I may not have got past the early part of day 3.

Also, thanks to everyone who has donated to Stockdales. It is a very worthy charity and I am sure that the money raised will be well invested in the future of the organisation.

If you still wish to donate can I ask that you do so over the next 3 weeks as we want to wrap this up as soon as we can?

Thanks again for everyone’s involvement. It’s something I will remember for along time.

Tony

p.s. Sorry for not being able to get the tracker working. I know many people tried to access the system. I have no idea why it wouldn't work.

Thanks for your support. To track our location use this link and scroll down until you see a user called "tonygresty". Click on the green link and our map will appear.

(as of Saturday evening I haven't been able to get the link working so if my name doesn't appear on the list thats why.)

http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/community/index.do

OK. I am not about to kid anyone. You don’t attempt to cycle 1000 miles in 7 days for charity.

You do a stupid thing like that because you want to! And if a charity benefits well that’s an excellent result!

What I am looking to do is raise some money for a local charity that cares for the most seriously disabled children and adults. They also provide support to other carers and stimulation for other disabled people through their life skills programme.

We often take for granted the normal day to day things in life like opening the curtains let alone having the ability to get on a bike and ride it into the distance.

Some people don’t get that chance in life and some of the lovely people who live at Stockdales don’t even get close.

Stockdales is currently raising money to expand it’s life skills project and also purchase a bungalow within the Trafford area.

For more information on Stockdales please visit www.stockdales.org.uk

Please give as much as you can. Both myself and nick have put significant training into this ride and are funding it ourselves so that all your donations go to Stockdales.

We hope to have a live satalite link to a web site so that people can see where we are.

Thanks for your support.

Tony & Nick