During the the early and traumatic part of the ride several people ran around a bit to help. My work colleague, Brian, contacted Alex Moulton Cycles and Shaun Moulton provided tyre advice and two new folding tyres very quickly to an advance accommodation address. Thanks guys. My wife Jane also spoke to Dan Farrell at Pashley's who also gave his time and advice freely. Thanks Dan.
Jane who drove the support car thro Staffs and Yorkshire to Penrith, and Em, whose graduation today co-incided with the JOG arrival.
Sorry, I've got a bit behind with these but loads of people have supported us beyond the call of duty. Here are a few of them:
CAROL, DUNCAN and LIZ of Swallet Farm. Their hospitality was tremendous. Carol drove down to collect me from Wells and did all our laundry. And then Luke left without paying! We'll catch up later!
I didn't get to the farm until late but the pub _gave_ Trish a rump steak which she cooked on my arrival.
Martin met us in Whitchurch and guided us through Bristol and up to Severn Beach. Cheers Martin!
And Sarah and Martin for putting us up at Badsey at short notice, the Wheatsheaf for re-opening the main menu after hours and Jane (James' mum) for joining us and paying. Thanks Jane.
You know about Trish already. She is currently dragging us through the West Midlands on an unplanned route.
Then there is Jane (my wife, Luke's mum) who has been coordinating things back at base and has agreed to drive up to Stone and support us with a vehicle from this afternoon, to drag us up through Yorkshire, and as far as Penrith. Thanks everybody.
Above in the pic we have L to R: Carol, Ian, Duncan, James, Trish and Luke...
When Trish said she'd join us as a support vehicle for a couple of days I thought 'Oh that will be nice, we'll be able to catch on the news and the food will be good!'. Little did I realise that we just wouldn't have been able to get this far without her.
Yesterday (day 3) we got up before the others at 6 and she drove me back to Wells so that I could complete the section from there to Swalley Farm before breakfast.
Before the ride she also spotted that we'd booked accommodation in the wrong Whitchurch! It would have been a disaster if we'd not corrected that be fore the ride.
Thanks Trish. We'll have to cath up with news some other time!
Luke and I had a hard but good run from the B&B, along the Camel Trail and up (and up) over Bodmin Moor. At the first sign of civilisation we stopped for a baked potato at the Wilsey Down pub. We were too early for lunch but Chris and Louise (following a request from Jan) opened the kichen especially and we ate well. Thanks guys. And thanks for the donation too!
On day 1 we were too relaxed and ran behind schedule all day and didn't get to our accommodation until 10:45pm. On the bright side, this meant we stopped at a place called Vogue for lunch instead of Bissoe. Here we met Rachael who was behind the bar at The Star. And what a star she was! It was officially too late for food but she dragged the chef back with some sort of bribe and we ate well! We even left with ice in our water bottles!
Tricia called this morning after I published the accommodation list on this blog to say that we'd booked our B&B on the 3rd night in the wrong Whitchurch!! Anyway, Tricia has now sorted this and we are staying at the farm to the left which is conveniently located in the right Whitchurch. I have corrected the accommodation list here.
Ellie, of UKVillages, also called. She has been doing a bit of publicity and we 'are booked in for Monday' on BBC Breakfast!! Whether this happens or not we will see! But it's probably worth having the TV on!
Meanwhile, another woman, Jane, has been keeping me calm and helping me get an awful lot of 'stuff' on a very small bike.
Thanks girls!!
(Can't wait to start pedalling now . . . but got my brother-in-law's wedding to attend to first).
Having spent hours and hours planning the route and creating the map website here, it's about time I started trying to raise some sponsorship so here goes . . .
PLEASE, PLEASE SPONSOR ME!!
(Selling was never a strong point of mine). Please click on the button and donate as much as you can for ruralnet|uk's Participation Fund.
Many thanks.
. . . and was given this!
Sustrans had a tent in 'The Green Fields' and I met Katie who was very interested in this ride and gave me this amazing plaque! I'm chuffed!
Other highlights of the festival for me were: a surprise appearance by Amadou and Mariam; Lou Rhodes (ex Lamb); Ed Harcourt; The marley Brothers and Dame Shirley Bassey (not my thing but she was absolutely amazing). But there were too many people this year . . . they'd "up-ed the capacity" but in my view the site can't cope with 165,000.
We started to try to leave at 1.00am this morning, we got stuck, like everyone else, we finally got onto tarmac at 07.30am!! They will be towing out vehicles for days!
I warned you here that when you get a text from Tricia, things happen!
I got an email today which said:
Morning Simon
I'll cover from lunch on 29/08 to & including lunch on 31/08.
I could bring the horse box which has plenty of space for bikes/luggage rather than the car if you think it's a good idea - can take 2 passengers only though.
Cheers
Tricia
So those of you who'd do a stage or two "if there was a support vehicle" no longer have an excuse! To clarify this means that we will have support vehicle from Creech St Michael (near Taunton) to Buxton. Thanks Trish.
We have been doing some really interesting things over here. A group of us decided to develop a response to a Governmnet tender (normally a cloak and dagger exercise) in the open and online. Anyway, the Open Innovation Exchange has been an amazing experience AND I have 'met' some really innovative and interesting people. One of them is Ed (that's him on the left). Anyway Ed is joining us for a section around Bristol. Cheers Ed.
Ed is working on making the online bit of the Darfur Campaign work which another friend, David Wilcox, wrote about here. The online bit of the Darfur campaign is here.
Here are promotional materials that you can download and give to your friends or put up in a community space.
You can download the cards (shown) here .
There is also an A4 Poster and A3 Poster.
All files are in PDF format. To save them to your hard disk, right-click on the link and select 'Save link As ...'.
Please spread them far and wide. We need all the publicity we can get!
Thanks.
We do
need the support of others to achieve our fund-raising goals and any support of
any kind is very much appreciated. Here's a summary of how individuals might be able to help.
Individuals
can help as follows:
- Promote the ride You can download and print cards and posters here. Put the posters up in prominent places and give the cards to people you meet.
- Tell
all your friends and family to look at blog.gpscycle.com. The more visitors
we get the better our chances of getting Corporate sponsorship.
- Comment
on the blog entries - give us advice, pledge support, encourage us! Note:
you will be asked for an email address when you comment but this is not
published.
- Buy
all your books and CDs and other Amazon stuff here! If you go to Amazon through the search box on the right and
actually buy something ruralnet|uk gets a donation of between 4 and 5% of what you spend!
- Join
the cycling team for the whole ride or selected stages - we'd like you to
raise a minimum of £25 for ruralnet|uk (or donate this amount yourself). In
return we will give you all the support and advice you need to participate and
you will have fun! You can raise additional money for ruralnet|uk or your own charity if you wish.
- Link
to this blog from your website or blog.
- Put
the fundraising widget on your own blog or website. You can get the code
from here
- Donate
what you can to the good cause - click here.
- Print
out the poster and pin it up in your workplace, village shop or anywhere
else where people will see it. Coming soon!
Businesses
can help as follows (and we can help you):
- Become a corporate sponsor and promote your products and services to cyclists, gps users, end to enders, digital map users and more. Please leave a comment or email me at s[dot]berry[at]gpscycle[dot]com.
Ian cycled LEJOG using an East Pennines route in 1991 but is best known for maintaining 'the ultimate links list' of LEJOG and JOGLE websites. You can visit this here. Ian has featured this blog and last year's very prominently on his list which Iam very grateful for. I have used Ian's list of links as the basis of the End to End shared bookmarks at del.icio.us/endtoend. This is represented as a 'tag cloud' in the first column of this blog (to the left).
If you want to put this tag cloud on your website or blog (well you might!) then simply insert the code below. This is a one-off task. As I add new links to del.icio.us, the cloud will change automatically. Clever . . . eh?
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://del.icio.us/feeds/js/tags/endtoend
?size=11-34;color=cc3300-cc0033;title=Other%20End%20to%20End%20Sites"></script>
[Ithink you may have to include the code as a single line (ie without the carriage returns) for it to work properly].
Zac is a Sport and Remedial Massage Practitioner and founder of SportsResource.org. I had the good fortune to sit opposite him on the train this afternoon. He spotted my folding bike and the conversation started. He was able to give all sorts of advise on my various aches and pains! Apparently, I need to get _a_lot_ more flexible - I'm seizing up in my old age. I wonder if Zac would like to be our Honorary Physiotherapist?
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