Have a read of our daily updates from the ride here.

We would like to thank the children, staff and parents of Bedgrove Junior for holding a Mufti day and raising a wonderful £535 for our charity, it is very much appreciated. And also a thank you to everyone else who has donated. Once we have collected all the money in from the sponsor forms we will put the total amount raised on here.

The Objective

Starting on the 15th of August 2008 five men on bikes will embark on the most epic journey of the British Isles - Lands End at the most southern tip of Cornwall, to John O'Groats the most northern point of mainland British Isles

The journey will be approximately 900 miles reaching 'the end of the road' 10 days later.

The route will be long and arduous, breath taking and memorable but most of all it will be enjoyable!!!

Make a difference
You can help make the difference by sponsoring us. All the money raised will be going to Macmillan Cancer Support. You can donate via the Justgiving web site by clicking HERE, or by clicking the just giving logo on the left hand side. We are aiming to raise £1500, so your generosity is needed to help us achieve our targets.

In order for us to help raise awareness for Macmillan and other cancer support charities, we plan to use sponsorship forms, as well as donations via the internet. We aim to get our places of work to help us make fellow colleagues aware and also we will hopefully stir some interest from our local news papers (more on this to follow).

Planning

Planning started seriously around December 2007 when the four of us met for lunch in a cafe in the quiet rural town of Chipping Norton. With various ideas on the table it was time to make some calls and spend some time looking at the computer screen - all before the bike training even starts.

Originally we had the idea of trying to get a certain big motel company to help by giving us discounted rooms. However it turned out that they were unwilling to help, so due to cost restrictions the campsite route was the only real option.

Accommodation will be easy to assemble tents, which better be easy as I am sure that we are going to be tired at the end of the day!!

We plotted our route and then found campsites nearby. We then contacted the campsites and explained what we were planning on doing and they were very helpful. Some were flexible on price and some were even F.O.C.!!! (see the thanks page)

Organizing of food for the journey and things required for comfortable camping will be ironed out nearer the time.

Due to the fact that we are going down the campsite route and are going to need the tents, we are going to be riding with a support vehicle, which will meet with us every night. We are going to need a driver for this vehicle, so thankfully Luke's dad Martin has committed to coming along for the whole trip.

Since plans have been progressing there is now going to be a fifth member of the team, read about this on the about us page.

FEBRUARY UPDATE

Luke, Sam and Chris have now got their new bikes, which you can see on the about page. We have all registered to ride the Dragonride sportive in Wales which is on the 15th June. We have decided to take part in this as it will be a good test of what is to come. The route takes in two classic UK category 1 climbs as used in the past on the Tour of Britain and the Milk Race. The ride winds its way along the former mining valleys of South Wales, (Ogmore, Rhondda, Swansea, Neath, Afan and Garw).

MARCH UPDATE

We have had another meeting after a group training ride in Bicester. The reality of the ride is starting to sink in now. And it is only 5 months away until the start. Leon has got excited by all the new bikes and has now also got himself a new bike, an 'ex british cycling' training bike.

APRIL UPDATE

Things are starting to come together with the plans now, along with the reality that we only have 4 months left to train for the ride. We have been lucky enough that Target Vehicle rentals have been kind enough to let us have a van for the trip free of charge. This is great and we are very grateful. You can see all the people that have helped us so far on the Thanks page. The training rides are starting to increase for most of us now, apart from Leon who is now the proud father of his second child, so he is on parenting duties for the near future.

MAY UPDATE

It's now less than three months until we start our ride and the training is now starting to up the pace. We have completed a few rides of over 100 miles, most of the time it has been in the pouring rain with all thanks to the great british weather.

All the campsites are now booked. There is a list of them all on the thanks page, with links to their web sites.

We also have only a few weeks until we are taking part in a sportive training ride in Wales, called the Dragon Ride. With lots of big hills this should be a really good tester for us. All we need now is for the weather to start getting better!!!

JUNE UPDATE

Well not long to go now and we have completed the Dragonride, we all managed to complete it, and felt quite good at the end of it which is good. We now have the jerseys printed with thanks to PSM of Banbury.

We treated the weekend as a training for the ride sleeping in the tents for the first time. All went well and we all enjoyed it. Below is a picture of what the camp looked like, so this is what we are going to have to look forward to at the end of a long days riding..

JULY UPDATE

Only a few weeks left to go now and training rides are becoming longer and more frequent. New things that have happened this month are that hopefully we will have live GPS tracking from this web site when we are on the ride, so that all the kind people who have sponsored us can see how we are getting on. More on this to come. We have also starting to sort out what spares we are going to be taking, as space in going to be a premium in the van and we want too make sure that we have most things covered with spares for the bikes etc.

We have also contacted the local newspapers so keep an eye out and hopefully there should be a story in them in the coming weeks. So all that is left for us to do over the next few weeks is to try and make sure that we eat healthy and all the right nutrition to give us the energy that we are going to need.

We would like to say thank you to everyone who has donated via justgiving or on the sponsorship forms that we have going around. It really is appreciated. Also if you are on facebook you can join our facebook group to keep up to date while the ride is happening. The group is here FACEBOOK GROUP.

AUGUST UPDATE

Only a few days left now until we leave to start our ride, and we are all getting very excited about starting. We have had a final meeting, so we all know who is taking what. So hopefully we should be well prepared. Now all that's left is rest for the final week.

We have been lucky enough to be given a tour of Prodrive that we are auctioning off to try and raise some more money for Macmillan Cancer. So if you are interested you can take a look at the auction for a Tour for two people around the prodrive factory here.

AUCTION FOR TOUR OF PRODRIVE FOR TWO

PLEASE KEEP CHECKING BACK FOR MORE UPDATES.......