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I suspect a lot of you know that this started for me because my father, Lance, retired from this and thought I would like to carry on to raise money for Rettendon All Saints Church. 

As this Church has been part of my life in many ways I was happy to carry on the Ride and Stride duties, thinking I might do it for a year or two. In fact I think I have been doing this for 9 years and each year I find myself keen to do this again. 

As I live in Suffolk I ride around the local area starting from home in Beck Row I wend my way to Bury St Edmunds and back covering about 50 miles and visiting about 32 Churches.

I usually have at least a couple of people say your form isn't the right colour or you've come all the way from Essex! This is because while this is a national event each County's Churches Trust runs their own version of the event. This is probably because Suffolk Historic Churches Trust came up with the idea originally and it was then adopted by the other counties. Essex Friends of Essex Churches Trust joined in 1983 and now in most years 30 counties take part. 

The Ride and Stride event is something that is open to anybody who wants to walk, run, cycle, horse ride, to raise money for the maintenance and repair of Churches, Chapels and Meeting Houses. The way it works is that you raise money for the County trust and for a Church of your choice. The money raised is divided 50:50. The lovely thing about the trusts is that they allow Churches to get significant grants for minor and major repairs which can make all the difference to being able to maintain the fabric of the building in a timely manner. In 2019 the Ride and Stride raised £1.2 million.

2020 as you might imagine is a slightly trickier year than some. Essex has decided that while it can have people doing the event and being sponsored it cannot sanction the event while Suffolk and many other counties are running the event in some way. I am therefore able to have my Essex sponsorship form and cycle in Suffolk as the event is on. 

I would love anybody to sponsor me where they can but I would also love to encourage everybody to think about having a day out on the second Saturday of September visiting a few Churches and raising some money for the upkeep of these beautiful buildings. 

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