On 21st June, I will be joining 34 like-minded friends in attempting to ride a motorcycle from John o'Groats to Land's End in 24 hours to raise money for Cancer Research. The catch? The bikes cannot cost more than £300 to buy and prepare, which means they must be MOT'd, taxed and everything else that makes a bike road legal.
In the bike world, £300 doesn't get you a lot. Think "part-finished project", "found in a hedge" or "only requires wheels and an engine". As many of the bikes may not even make it to John o'Groats in the first place, the challenge dictates that we don't use motorways, so the distance to cover is 906 miles, roughly equivalent to a journey from London to Barcelona.
I thought I'd got lucky by finding a BMW K100RS within budget, only to discover that it had an incontinence issue and was leaking oil from both gearbox and engine. In the last few evenings and weekends I've stripped it down, replaced the oil seals and put it back together again, which isn't bad for someone who needs two goes to hold a spanner the right way around.
The challenge runs from sunrise to sunrise. In order to make the distance in the allotted time, we'll have to maintain an average speed of 45mph, which gives us an allowance of 3 hours for fuel, toilet and breakdown stops.
So, I'm unfit, ill-prepared, riding a dirt-cheap bike prepared by myself with the mechanical sympathy of a baboon on a bad day for 24 hours straight. In addition, I'm going to ride to John o'Groats over 2 days and home again afterwards, making a total of nearly 2,000 miles in four days. What could possibly go wrong?!
The work conducted by Cancer Research is extremely worthwhile. We all know someone who's been affected by cancer; for me it's my father, who's currently in remission from prostate cancer.
Please give generously to help the research to continue.
More information can be found at the challenge website:
Longest Day Down Challenge. The run will be reported in Performance Bikes magazine as one of their journalists is joining us and real-time updates will be posted on Twitter with the hashtag #LDDChallenge or you can take a look at our
Facebook group. If you'd like to know more about the trials and tribulations of preparing a 26-year-old bike for a trip like this, there are various updates on my
Facebook page.
Thank you for reading and for any support you can offer, all donations will be gratefully received.