What's all this about then?
Chester Chronicle news article!!! -- Download the article here
On 31st August 2009, Andy Miller & Jon Shorter are riding 1000 miles from London to Monaco to raise awareness and fundraise for the Brain Injury Rehabilitation & Development charity.
Throughout the route, we'll be carrying tents, sleeping bags, clothing, food & bike repair gear.
The route is still being determined but will be loosely based around:
Calais --> Amiens --> Paris --> Lyon --> Avignon --> Aiz-en-Provence --> Fréjus --> Monaco
The mileage will be around 1000 miles, with a daily target of approximately 100 miles. That'll require a daily intake of around 8000 calories and a few rest days en-route. Still, we hope to complete the journey within 2 weeks which will give us another week to try our French on the beaches and Cafés along the French riviera. We'll be flying back from Nice after the 3 weeks, straight into Liverpool (John Lennon) airport.
We'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to look around our site and get in touch if you have any questions or advice for us.
Please show some support by sponsoring us, helping out with a few pounds towards our equipment costs, or just keeping an eye on our blog/satellite tracking & leaving us a few words of encouragement on our Guestbook as we're cycling.
The event will use GPS tracking to allow you to follow our progress in real-time from our Watch-Live page.
We'll be updating this page and blog as the departure date gets closer so please do bookmark our site and check back every now and again. If you're near London on 31st August, we'd love you to call over and cheer us on!!
I love it when a plan comes together....
We wish to thank the following companies for their support.
Endura for their kind donation of clothing to be auctioned, and Britannia Cestrian Removals for their kind donation of £100
The boys will be staying in a lovely caravan with air-con and patio at Camping Prairies de la Mer in Grimaud, St. Tropez on the 17, 18, 19 September, massive thanks to the fine people at www.keycamp.co.uk for their kind donation.
You can all sleep better at night knowing that the boys have their travel insurance provided by the awesome people over at InsureandGo. Special thanks to Lizzie for sorting it out!
Kryptonite have kindly donated 2x New York Fahgettaboudit U-Locks and 2x New York Fahgettaboudit Chain & New York Disc Locks.
The New York Fahgettaboudit locks are believed to be the most secure bike locks in the world. Kryptonite are so confident of these locks that include up to £2,500 bike protection in the event of a theft. Our special thanks to Nick Watkin of Kryptonite Europe in Walsall for his help and support.
The Bike Factory in Boughton, Chester, have offered to help with servicing our bikes and have pledged to give us some much needed training in servicing and road-side repairs, as well as providing various bike spares and nutritional drinks for the trip. Thanks to Steve the General Manager for this and also Andy who sold us Andy's new Trek 7700, offering some great advice. Cheers Guys.
Thanks to GARMIN who have agreed to lend us a top of the range 'Edge 705' GPS unit for the trip so we don't get lost; they've also provided us with a 'Nuvi 550' Sat Nav to auction off and raise more funds for BIRD.
Red Bull have sent us lots of tasty Red Bull for our training. Having Wiiings has certainly made endurance training that bit easier... thank you especially to Rob Smyth!
Additionally BELL have kindly agreed to send us a Bell 'SWEEP' helmet each and another to auction off :) Fantastic, guys.
We have approached a few more cycling-related companies for support and hope to be thanking more people on this page in the very near future.
All help is greatly appreciated as not only does this make more money for BIRD, but it also reduces our own personal costs which are already far greater than originally anticipated.
Such help also makes the trip safer too. It's pretty important (to us, at least) that we get there and back in one piece.
Massive thanks to all of you who have helped so far!
Jon & Andy
