W2W CHARITY RIDE

A group of 11 of us from BAM Nuttall and the Environment Agency cycled from Walney to Whitby in May 2009. We are all work colleagues from the Broadland Flood Alleviation Project on the Norfolk and Sufflok Broads. All 11 of us completed the ride. We raised £8000 for the Nancy Oldfield Trust and other charities. We took three and a half days, including a much-longer-than-planned stop in Tan Hill Inn! None of us were regular cyclists, some hadn't cycled for 30 years, but we all did some training prior to the event. However, as we all come from Norfolk, nothing could really prepare us for the hills! We took a backup minibus with a box trailer for our bikes to transport us up to Barrow / back from Whitby. Our accommodation was:-

• Barrow in Furness - Barrie Guest House: Very pleasant and helpful. A good start to the trip
• Kendal - Kendal Youth Hostel - Quite alright and very cheap. Nobody else in Kendal would take a booking for just a Saturday night only.
• Bowes - Ancient Unicorn Inn: OK, but were pretty short with us because we arrived late from Tan Hill! Some also stayed in a local B&B, which had been organised by the pub. Can't remember the person's name but she was very nice and helpful, proper traditional B&B hospitality!
• Guisborough - The Fox pub and The Three Fiddles pub (all arranged through The Fox): Reasonable accommodation, but Guisborough isn't a particularly nice place. Had to stay there though, because we couldn't get accommodation for 12 in Great Ayton.
• Whitby - Wentworth Guest House: Only place that could fit us all in. Very nice and hospitable. Arranged through Whitby Tourist Board.

For stops en route we stopped at:-

• Day 1 - Grange Over Sands: A nice little cafe at the far end of the promenade area, left at the mini-roundabout near the station.
• Day 2 - A sandwich bar in Kirkby Stephen, then Tan Hill Inn for a major session!
• Day 3 - Hardly anywhere to stop! Eventually we found the Post Office in Appleton Wiske where they sold food and made up ham sandwiches to order. All pubs etc were shut until late afternoon.

We used the Sustrans maps throughout, but also took a set of OS Landranger maps just for interest in the local areas. Generally the route was well signposted, but we did miss a few turnings when they were just stickers on signposts and the verge had grown up around them.

We used your website to get most of the information for the trip and it was extremely informative and helpful. The route profile was very useful, and was a good visual aid to generate more sponsorship money! We rode on a mixture of bikes from mountain bikes through to racers and all managed OK. The mountain bikes were obviously slower, but coped well with everything that was thrown at them. The racers managed much better up hills, but had to be more wary on some of the rougher sections, including some on-road sections that cab be pretty rough!

We all enjoyed it so much that several people are cycling regularly now, including weekend events. We have also organised our own London - Paris trip for later in the year, just for the fun of it

Dan Russell - July 2009