CHI charity bike ride

Some people, it seems, will go to the ends of the Earth to help CHI. Trustees Michael Ridgway and Alex Clarke with friend and CHI supporter Guanyu Chen did this as best they could while staying in the UK with a sponsored cycle ride from Land’s End to John o’ Groats!  Michael sent us this report:

To be honest, my cousin Alex and I were really not entirely sure we could make it - we are both 58 and - er - could we really cycle a thousand miles?! I had intended to get into training with this but somehow it was difficult to find the time and the furthest I had managed was on one occasion from Winchester to Stockbridge and back which was about 22 miles. I had never actually owned a bike since I was twelve and so I was not really very bike proficient but I ventured into a Winchester cycle shop and bought a brand new one with 27 gears especially for the trip.

I thought it was going to be just Alex and me, but then student/artist Guanyu Chen who was exhibiting her paintings at CHI’s art exhibition at the Guild Hall in Winchester volunteered to join us.

So it was the three of us - Alex, me and Guanyu aged 26. We head off from a sunny but very windy Lands End on October the 1^st 2005. You may be able to picture us cheerily setting off: Alex and me - the two getting-on-a-bit ones on our brand new bikes and kitted out with all the gear and the young Chinese one with a more rickety borrowed bike wearing a big warm coat. Possibly a slightly odd sight, the three of us, but we had confirmation that we were believable as genuine cyclists after less than ten minutes into the ride when a motorists who I think had been held up by us momentarily came alongside, wound down the window and yelled at us “Cycle fanatics!” And there I was thinking I had “car driver” written all over me.

We started rather late in the year of course and there was concern about what the weather would be like but I went to some length to reassure everyone that it can be shown statistically that it doesn’t rain in this country nearly as much as people think and that you can normally expect it to remain fairly dry. “Rain is a bit of a myth” I explained.

My prediction stood up quite well for the first two weeks but I was proved so terribly wrong later especially after our first stop in the Lake District. An

idyllic location with mountains all around, mist cascading down the mountains, beautiful autumn colours - but then the rain set in with a vengeance! A nearby river began to burst its banks and the field that we had pitched our tent in began to flood - it was a race against time to get the tent down and out of the field. We all thought –“we can’t cycle in this weather”, and so we just managed a couple of miles to the next hostel where we stayed the night

But the rain was still as severe the following day and it began to dawn on us that we couldn’t wait for it to stop so we carried on cycling regardless. This was when I realised that all these wonderful waterproofs that we had spent so much money investing in were not very effective when it got really wet. Somehow the wet gets in if it is raining hard enough! If it is not the rain it is the fact that the rain causes the outfit not to breathe and so with all that pedalling you are drenched through with your own sweat!

We would take time off to savour our journey and look around but at the same time we did do a lot of serious pedalling. We pedalled hard and long most days. Prior this ride I had simply never cycled 30 miles - nowhere near - but 30 to 40 sometimes 50 miles in a day was quite normal for us and it was a real eye opener to me to realise how far you can get on a bike! We seemed to get stronger as we went along and often we were cycling at a high speed!

Usually we had supper in the tent. On the road we would stop off somewhere for lunch and we would always take small provisions , bags of nuts, crisps, chocolate to give us energy and of course plenty of water. We would often stop somewhere nice in a field by the road and have a picnic (when it wasn’t raining) and sometimes we would turn in at a pub and have a ploughman’s lunch (or whatever). Supper was usually in the tent. Alex and Guanyu were the “cooks” and we eat superbly I have to say.

For me the part of Scotland beyond Inverness had a special appeal - the clarity and purity of the air and the light was somehow magical.

The trip was an experience of a lifetime, a real adventure and good fun - there were a lot of laughs along the way I can tell you! It has certainly given me a perspective on this island that I couldn’t have got in any other way, a real feeling of the extent of the country - a sense of conquest almost over it and we were very happy to have raised from all our generous sponsors almost £4,000 for CHI.

Do you have an idea for fundraising for CHI? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Please email info@childhealthinternational.org

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