King's charity ride travel arrangements

OK,everything is coming together nicely.

The plan is to travel up together with the bikes and two riders in John's van, 5 riders in my duffbus and 4 riders in my other pimp wagon. Each vehicle will then return to Whitstable with drivers who are not riding. So if my maths is correct that is eleven riders and three separate drivers. The duffbus will be acting as support vehicle for the ride that will shadow us on the ride to Whitstable. It will have a three bike rack in case of problems.

Riders confirmed and sponsored are;
Bazza
Dave
Martin
Ian Andrews (Mr Pink)
Luke
Gordon
John Massey
Henny
Woodsie
Jack (my eldest son)
Me

The plan is to get all the bikes to Gordon's between 5 and 6pm on SATURDAY They will then be loaded up onto John's van ready for a very early depart on Sunday morning.

If you have a problem getting to Gordon's for then, I can carry 5 bikes in the Duffbus so could collect and deliver if that helps.

We plan to leave Herne Bay from my place at 6am sharp on Sunday morning so you need to be over to mine by then if you want transport.

We will meet Gordon, Henny and John en route.

Luke and Woodsie I can pick up on the way through if you can let me know when and where.

We plan to leave Denmark Hill(King's) at 0800 and get going as soon as possible, Gordon and I have ridden the route twice so we have it mapped for you. I will provide maps and emergency number for the duffbus if we need to call it in.

Weather looks favourable (wind behind us) so we should hold a good average speed, but expect an eight hour ride on mostly flat terrain.

As we have said before the route is a mix of on and off road (crab and winkle type surface)and we recommend a mountain bike with slick tyres running high pressures. As with all rides you will need a few spares:

Tubes
Repair kit
Pump
Spare chain links
Basic tools

And (Dave) ;-) a bike that has seen a bit of maintenance. The route is pretty rough on bikes on one particular part


For the Barbeque thing we expect people to be arriving from 2pm onwards with riders coming in between 2pm and 4pm (but may have to slide this either way depending on hold ups etc)

The venue is Whitstable, I will confirm to you via text or email as I don't want to put it on the internet an have three hundred teenagers trying to score free beer :-)

There will be a barbecue (burger , veggie option, salad, pasta kind of thing) plus a beer / Sangria / Soft drink. As we said we are asking for a contribution of £5 per head, (there will be a collection bucket on the day) all profits will be added to the King's charity.

As it is a charity thing we will have to limit it to one drink per person with the food, if you want more then of course bring your own, depending how thirsty you are.

We have well over 60 people confirmed to come along so it should be a good evening (Gordon will make it so)

The collection total is looking like around £3,000 with an outstanding effort from John Massey.

I can't thank you guys enough for this, really appreciate it, let's look forward to a good, safe day, any queries or stuff I have not covered give me shout on here or text or call my mobile.

Hi Andy if it would be easier I could get round to yours on Saturday and put bikes in my van to take over to Gordons, let me know?

Maintenance, whats that? its the thing other people do is'nt it? I have got some oil, will that suffice?

Oil? You don't think your bike may reject it?

May take you up on the van thing, let's see what people come up with later...

Just met Gordon down at the beach hut venue for the barbecue to give everything the once over. All looks great, many thanks to Pete for the kind offer to use it for the day.

We have moved the timings on a little, I have edited the main post above, in case you missed it it is now:

For the Barbeque thing we expect people to be arriving from 2pm onwards with riders coming in between 2pm and 4pm (but may have to slide this either way depending on hold ups etc)

The venue is Whitstable, I will confirm to you via text or email as I don't want to put it on the internet an have three hundred teenagers trying to score free beer :-)

Both Woodsie and Luke will be coming to My place in Whitstable Sunday morning and travelling to Brenley Cnr where they can decamp into the alternative vehicle.
Bazza is dropping his bike over to me Saturday

After your complementary drink you will need to provide your own booze, tea or Skinny Latte.

I will try and sort some ice for the above to chill it all down.

There are a few offies locally etc so no great panics.

Please make sure your bring plenty of fluids for the ride (I got through 3 litres on the last ride)

Bring food and energy bars (up to 8 hours of exercise without nutrition will see you bonk)

Please remember tubes, patches and a multi tool (if you get separated with no phone signal to call for backup you'll need them)

With so many different tyre sizes etc it is hard to help out others who forget (I certainly don't intend to walk or not complete the ride because I've given my spare tube to somebody who didn't bother to carry spares).

One last word, on the first trial ride we tried different types of bike it proved unsuitable to use a skinny tyred road bike due to 16 plus pinch flats in five hundred yards, on the second ride with a single speed hard tail and a hard tail with 1.4 slicks no punchers (no beaten up feeling either).

By all means if you know better than us bring a road bike with 23c tyres and you can watch me ride off to the party in Whitstable to drink all your beer..

Good luck everybody and well done for all your fundraising efforts, good intentions and commitment to us all and a very good cause.

God's speed

Some more details:

John Massey and corporate sponsor
John has arranged a very generous (£600) sponsorship from one of his business contacts, they are providing logoed cycling shirts for the whole team, which will be provided for the ride (bring your own just in case of any last minute hitches). They will want to do some press coverage and media stuff so be prepared with the fake tan and hair gel.

Media stuff with Kings
As we are doing this with Kings College Hospital and also the corporate sponsor above, I have arranged permission for a quick photoshoot at the hospital, for use in various media. We will keep the faffing about to a minimum, but we will need to add 15 - 20mins to our schedule for this before we set off.

Future presentation with Kings
Once we have collected all the money in, we will, at some point present one of those large cheques and do some photographs. This will be arranged some time in the future, I will keep you posted.

Bogmeister wrote:

Bring food and energy bars (up to 8 hours of exercise without nutrition will see you bonk)

Well that settles it im not bringing any food.......

I have sent out a text to people for the BBQ venue party, I have a rather nice map if anyone wants one, just text me your email and I will send it over.

I have posted up the route in a pdf file, you will need adobe acrobat to read it.

Please note that there are two pages to the file, you can get to it here


http://boghogs.co.uk/Route.pdf

Please print it out and bring it with you


For the first bit from the hospital we will need to stay together as Gordon and I have planned a bit of a custom route using cycle paths, once we get to Greenwich you can follow the map along the Thames to Dartford.
Most of it is on cycle route 1, which is well signposted.
My intention is to make it a group ride, but if some feel the urge to push on then the route is mapped for them.
The support bus number is on the map.

Duff nice work

I've printed my map off and very smart it looks too.

Please explain the Roadie term Bonk to Crabbers as I think he maybe getting a little too excited and is under some misapprehension.

It has nothing to do with courting couples in and around the Crab and Winkle line.

Any worries please get hold of Andy or myself.

Spin Spin

Bogmeister wrote:


By all means if you know better than us bring a road bike with 23c tyres and you can watch me ride off to the party in Whitstable to drink all your beer..

Yep Bazza you may have a point

Even I couldn't drink all your beer but I can give it a blooming good try if you like.

Did some training last night and it went really well

have a good ride tomorrow guys and enjoy the well deserved beer at the end of it.

Thanks for a great ride and a great day guys, really appreciate all your support for this great cause.

Thanks to Jim and Dangerous for their generous online donations, much appreciated,

Full debrief and pictures later

Cheers

Duff

Hi Guys

Thank you all for making a great day special

Respect to you all for your commitment in raising money and taking part.

Everybody dug deep and really surprised me in the way we sped to the finish on time as a team, brilliant.

It was smashing to see you and your families enjoying the after ride bash (we certainly turned one marathon session into another one).

Rider of the day Jack "The Burn" Hart (well done for toughing it out, respect)

Thanks to Jim, Dangerous and all the kind people for their generous donations, it really makes our effort worthwhile.

A big thanks for Slipper for brokering the amazing sponsorship deal, the drink/food deal from Binnie (for all your convenience shopping needs in Blean), partially bankrupting the Canterbury chapter of BNI and providing the van transport.

Thanks to Peter and Jackie for the use of the beach hut for the after ride party (Sampson Brothers Builders for all your construction needs)

A super chunk of thanks for Duff and family for dreaming it all up and making it all happen (loads of work)

A most successful and satisfying day.

Thank you to all who rode yesterday and supported the King's Charity Ride, Andrew (Andy) and I are really grateful to you for giving up your day for this, Thank you to John for joining from a personal point of view. Thank you to Gordon who gave up his time to help plan the route and making everything run smoothly and arranging the beach hut with Pete and Jackie for which I thank, it's a beautiful place and thanks to Pete for setting up everything on the day. I hope that you all had an enjoyable day and your aches, pains and sunburn soon subside. So who's up for next year?

Thanks to everyone again, riders, wives, partners, children.

Love from

Sarah

The pleasure is all ours Duffette

Please let us know if you wish us to help out towards the travel expenses

Regards

Gor