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Cyrus Raises £2,000 for The Prince’s Trust
17th Nov 2011/867979578e5100050a7d0f687b58e3c31d9ee0ff.jpg "Palace2Palace")
Recently a team of seven from Cyrus took part in the 2011 Palace to Palace sponsored cycle ride for The Prince’s Trust.
The aim was to cycle the 45 miles from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle. We anticipated it might be a challenge so the team- who had varying levels of fitness- put in some training sessions over the summer months.
It was an early, chilly start- around 5.30am- five travelled with their bikes in a Transit down from Cambridge and two had to orienteer the tube network which had ‘planned engineering works’ on their normal route in.
With a start time of 8.38 we made it to Horse Guards Parade with only minutes to spare and, in our haste to get through the cordons and marshals, there was an early casualty - Simon Freethy fell off his bike before we’d even set off.
Rain was forecast but never materialised and we set off down the Mall in the early morning sun.
The ride was actually much easier than we’d imagined mostly because the route was quite flat. We travelled along the banks of the Thames- passing the London Eye, Albert Bridge and other famous landmarks. Then we went through Richmond and Hampton Court Park, before encountering a couple of testing climbs near Chertsey and Virginia Water .
Three and a half thousand cyclists took part in the event- all cruising along at different speeds- and the team all agreed that just being part of it was enough to give you a lift. Physically we all fared well- some stopped at each water station to refuel with bananas -and. mechanically the bikes held up despite a loose chain and complete gear rebuild!
Cycling up Long Walk towards the castle, normally closed to cyclists was inspiring, In the end Simon and Carole Freethy came in at around 3hrs and 20 minutes, and the rest of the team of Jez Bliss, Sarah Gregory, Jeremy Brown, and Martyn and Caroline Flood, about an hour later. Special thanks to Michael for being driver, porter, and photographer for the day.
The Cyrus team raised just under £2,000 for The Prince’s Trust, out of a total raised by the whole event of £320,000. With a team of 0.2% of the riders (a team of 7), we raised 0.625% of the total funds. Cyrus yet again punching above its weight.
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