charity event in aid of breast cancer support

[John W]

Hi all,

sorry, this is not GT40 related.
Appologies for the intrusion, but I hope you realise this is a worthy charity, given that it affects 1 in 7 people at some time in their life (and yes, men can suffer from it too).

Myself and a few other members of the bike club I belong to are doing a sponsored John O'Groats to Lands End motorcycle ride this weekend, in aid of Breast Cancer support.

In itself this doesn't sound like too much of a challenge.
We are however intending to complete the ride in one hit.
Thats 850 miles in one go, with minimal use of motorways, starting at 3:30 am on Sunday, and hopefully arriving before the pubs shut !

If any of you would like to donate, please feel free to do so.
The following link aoows you to donate on line.

http://www.justgiving.com/wvam_bcc

Thanks people.

[John W]

Well, we did it !!
Set off at 3:46am, arrived at 8:48pm.
That includes petrol stops every 120 to 150 miles, and coffee and food stops.
The actual 'travelling' time gave an average of 68mph, but with the stops it works out about 54mph.
My speedo showed a distance of 920 miles, but the gps recorded 874, so I guess my speedo is 5% out.

We stopped for a drink in Perth at 7:20am, and then Gretna at 9:30 for another one.
The worst bit of the ride for me was mid morning, having decided to have a hot chocolate to drink. BAD idea as it sent me to sleep !
This was also a stint of motorway work, so extremely boring. We had to resort to a few 'bike exercises' to give us something to think about and stay awake long enough to get to the next stop. It seems even those who had red bull were struggling too.
Lunch in Chester at 1pm, and then into Wales for a bit of proper motorcycling around some bends.
Coffee at Builth Wells at 3:20 kept us going until our next stop at Taunton at 6:20. From here it was a final blast all the way to the end.

All this is documented with stamps and signatures at each stop, so we can get our 'end to end' certificates.
I also took photos of my speedo at most stops (forgot at some), and we have both fuel and hotel receipts too.
Oh, we also got to sign the register at Lands End

Most of the trip pics will be posted on a web site, along with the route and stop points, which you can find a link to from the front page of www.wvam.org.uk.
Give it a while though for this to be updated, as I need to email them all to the web person to do this.

Many thanks to those of you who have donated too. Much appreciated.
You'll see from the pics when they appear that we wore fleurescent tabbards with the ride details on, which got lots of questions asked, and raised a further 100quid during the ride from people at petrol stops, and the hotels.

Right, time to deal with these photos

[Ian Anderson]

John

Congratulations on the trip and a good worthwhile cause.

In a couple of years perhaps a group of 40's should do the same trip!

Now if memory serves me right that is about 1/4 the distance the 40 managed at Le Mans. Still it is a hell of an achievement.

Well Done

Ian

[John W]

The difference is Ian, we were on public roads with other traffic, did not have the ability to 'change driver', do 200mph down the straights without getting nicked, or able to get a group of people to fill up the bikes and go to the loo for us

I should add that only around 250 miles of this was on Motorway, the rest being major A roads.

It seems a lady cycled from end to end in 2 days three hours. Now THAT really is a feat of stamina. What I don't know though is how often they are allowed a break, and for how long. I can't see anyone being able to continuously cycle for 51 hours straight off.

We only stopped once for a sit down bite to eat at Chester (1 hour). The others were coffee and chocolate stops at the services (20 minutes max).

Oh, on a funnier note, having celebrated at Lands End one of the poeple suggested it would be a good idea to stay up until 3:30 so we'd all been up 24 hours, so we did, all except him who went to bed at 3am, 30 minutes too early