Sunday 31 August 2014

Leamington Spa to Farringdon

I completed a training ride from Leamington Spa to Farringdon yesterday morning.  It was my first long ride with the bike set up for LEJOG.  The route was from Google Maps, extracted with GPS Visualiser and loaded via BaseCamp.

The bike was good, legs good, GPS great, riding on the Fosse Way less so!

The ride was the same length as the shortest day on my LJOG route, but only had half the ascent of the first day!  You can see the full ride route and stats below:




Tuesday 19 August 2014

Introduction

As part of my 50th birthday celebrations in July 2014, I committed to ride my single speed bike from Land's End to John O'Groats to raise money for the Buwan Kothi International Trust.  This charity runs the Gilly Mundy Memorial Community School to help families in the villages around Buwan Kothi in Haryana, northern India get the best possible education for their children.  See www.buwankothi.org.uk for more details of the charity

I subsequently decided to extend the ride a little to visit both Lizard Point and Dunnet Head, the most southern and northern points respectively of mainland Great Britain.  Coincidentally, these locations are sites used by two of Apteco's customers: Lizard Point is an RNLI Lifeboat station (see www.thelizardlifeboat.org.ukand Dunnet Head is an RSPB sanctuary (see www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/d/dunnethead).  Therefore, although it is a long way to ride, I'll take the chance to visit the two ends of the country to make a donation to each charity!!

If you are interested to support my main fund-raising effort, thank you very much, you can do so by visiting www.virginmoneygiving.com/JamesAlty.  The money you donate will be used to improve the education and life chances of the children from Buwan Kothi and surrounding villages.