I always thought there was only one 6:30 on a Sunday! As I dragged myself out of bed I remembered that isn’t the case when Titan are hosting their annual charity bike ride in conjunction with St Neots Cycling Club. Karen, Caroline, George and I were there at 7:30 to make sure everything was set up and ready to go for the first riders to sign on from 8:00. We’d filled the urns, got the soup warmers plugged in (didn’t fuse the building this year) and waited. The first riders to sign on were the Titan Mountain Bikers who decided to go ‘rogue’ and do their own ride to Grafham, round the reservoir and back.
A relatively continuous trickle of 80 plus riders signed on between 08:30 and 09:45 , donated their minimum of £5, took a banana or two courtesy of Paul Haynes (SNCC) and headed off to do either a 60km or 100km ride. The weather held and although cold, with wind behind for the final 15km it was bright and everyone was in good spirits when they arrived back at HQ to be fed and watered by Holdsworth Foods generous donation of soup and rolls, sausage rolls, cakes and pies via Gary Adnitt (SNCC).
We hear that out on the long ride the pace was warm to say the least! There was talk that the pace at the front from the pro’s compared well to that at the Tour of Dubai a couple of weeks ago! With a few challengers in close company, we understand that Jacob Hennessy upheld SNCC and Titan’s honour on the day in some great company from riders from far and wide. (well, Bedford anyway!)
Many of the riders and non-riders on the day, along with Titan staff very generously brought various things to the ride for 3 Pillars Feeding the Homeless, and we managed to send Mick Pescod away with a lot of warm clothing, toiletries, food and sleeping bags for this worthy local charity. Thank you to everyone who dropped things off, fingers crossed our street friends will manage to stay warm in this bitterly cold weather because of your donations.
As a community, we need MAGPAS, in fact the Cycling Club had an incident the week before the event which demonstrated just what a huge service they provide for all of us. Fortunately the rider concerned is recovering well from that incident, and we had no incidents on the day.
Final cash amounts are still to be worked out but both MAGPAS and 3 Pillars will hopefully be very pleased.
It was great to see so many faces from the last reliability ride and I hope we see you all again (and maybe a few more) next year! It’ll be around the same time of year and we’d like to encourage more and more people and clubs to attend! We know we’ve got the formula right, the growth of the event is about getting the information out there and passing the word on about how good the event is!
I’ve attached a few photos of the day. Thanks to the riders for making it all happen. We’d be lost without you!
Mandy