One of our intrepid bike ride participants, Steven Burbidge, has kindly sent a report of his travels on behalf of St Mary Itteringham.
Steven went down with a bug on the Friday & Saturday of the bike ride week, so didn’t get to do the ride on the day. However, he made the most of the lovely weather we have been having recently and did the ride as planned.
Steven says
‘I last took part in the NCT sponsored ride back in the late 1980s as a teenager, this will be a very different ride to what I did back then! I returned to cycling in 1994 to lose a bit of weight – and because I’d always wanted to do the Norwich 100 ride. Having completed that ride in 1995, I have kept going ever since, riding a total of almost 20,000 miles since then. I have now completed another 24 rides of 100 miles or more, so the planned 127 miles of this route doesn’t hold any fear for me!
When I was invited to take part in the ride this year, my initial reaction was that 100 churches would be a great target – I subsequently saw on the NCT website that 87 was the all-time record & began to wonder whether I was being too optimistic!
Route planning was a challenge, I started off by working out where there were clusters of churches (Fakenham, Walsingham, Wells, Sheringham, Cromer, Aylsham) and then plotting a route to link them up maximising the number of churches between each town. With a final total on the route of 117, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes on the day!
Between 5.04am when I left home and 19.47 when I finished, I visited a total of 125 churches/chapels/ruins, in a total of 135.5 miles! Between 9am & 5pm when the churches would have been open for the ride on the day, I visited 69.
I have a just giving page set up, https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/steven-burbidge3 as well as physical sponsor forms in both my shop (Cromer Trophies & Engraving) and our community shop in the village. I haven’t set an actual target for my fundraising, but everything I can raise is certainly going to a good cause”.
