Time to catch up with a few of the cyclists who I have been following or I will be following over the coming weeks and months. There are quite a few…

First of all my brother, Matthew, who is cycling with quite a few other supporters of Huddersfield Town football club from Yeovil in Somerset to Huddersfield in West Yorkshire in the lead up to the final game of the season which happens to be against… Yeovil Town! It is a 250 mile bike ride over 4 days and he is hoping to raise over £1000 for the ‘Keep It Up’ campaign, half the money raised going to The Yorkshire Air Ambulance (geddit?) & half goes to The Huddersfield Town Academy. He is doing pretty well and has so far raised £745. If you want to help him get to £1000, please follow this link.

Next up is Barbara Frost. She is soon to set off on her cycle from Rome back to her (& my) home town of Reading. Barbara has friends in high places, or I assume she must as she has just posted the following message to her website;

‘The British Embassy in Rome is sending a driver to pick me, the hubby and of course the bike up at Rome airport and take us to our hotel – this is in an amazing help!’

Indeed it is! She sets off on 2nd May and hopes to be back home for the end of May. She’s cycling solo (her husband is just meeting her at two or three points along the way) and is an inspiration for anyone who is new to the retirement business. As she says herself: “People ask me why – I reply ”why not”.”  She is raising money for the Buscot Babies ward at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading and is aiming for £10,000 by September 2012. You can follow her cycle on her blog.

Lorely Forrester has emailed me about her brother who is just about to celebrate his 60th birthday, and he plans to do it in style by cycling from London to Paris in aid of The Big Issue (‘a hand up, not a hand out’ as they put it). He has written all about his plans on Lorely’s website, WritingFromTheEdge (which, when I first saw it squashed together like that, read as ‘Writing From The Hedge’ which would have been curious; I think however, that she does her writing at the computer like the rest of us!). He is called Lester Knibb and with a glorious name like that, how could you not sponsor him? His sponsorship page is here. Should I ever write a novel, Lester Knibb will be a main character and I shall make him a cyclist in honour of the real Lester Knibb. Bon voyage Lester!

I should have perhaps ranked Deri Marshall a little higher in this run-down of cycling heros so apologies Deri that you are at number four; you deserve a place much higher in the rankings! Deri emailed me a few days ago explaining his plans to cycle the 1400 miles from Aberystwyth in West Wales to Budapest, Hungary in aid of Cambodian Children. He will be cycling with his brother & his dad and will be using Eurovelos 5 & 6 to guide him all the way. Hopefully my little trip along the Eurovelo 5 was of some use to him in planning the adventure which will take place this coming summer. His sponsorship page is here. I do hope that I haven’t cocked this up by assuming that Deri is indeed a male person… The picture I have used here is from the sponsorship page which shows a female. Deri, apologies if you are female; please feel free to correct me!

Good luck to all these people and the many more who will be heading off on charity cycling trips in the coming months. I am quite, no, very jealous…