About us

We're two friends, James on the left and Gareth on the right, who met at university in Exmouth seventeen years ago and after we survived that experience we've both somehow ended up living in Bristol about 5 minutes from each other. Over the last few years we've been on the odd bike ride together and we've occasionally brought up our old idea of cycling from Montpelier, an area of Bristol, to Montpellier in France. It's about the same distance as Lands End to John O'Groats, but with much better weather, wine and cheese!

It was finally during the autumn of 2016 that Gareth brought up the idea again and we finally made the next step and set a date for September 2017. We wanted to make it a challenge in order to raise money for charity and we've set ourselves 10 days for the trip, which looking at route and mileage will certainly give us a run for our money.

Parcours (a fancy French cycling word to use instead of route!)

The route will start off from Montpelier in Bristol, not too far from our respective houses, and we'll then cycle down via Bath and Salisbury before finishing up the UK leg in Portsmouth. It's where Gareth grew up but we won't be hanging around for long as we'll have to catch an evening ferry across to St.Malo.

Our trip through France takes us South, mainly through the middle of the country but avoiding any of the bigger cities along the way. We'll eventually take a bit of an Eastwards deviation across the Cévannes mountain range towards Châteauneuf-du-pape before jinking back towards the coast and our final destination.

Charities

We'll talk more about our chosen charities in an upcoming post, but we've picked one each and there's obviously different reasons behind each one. Click on the logos to find out more from their respective websites and you can donate to either charity via the 'Donate' buttons on the right hand sidebar (Thyroid Cancer Support West to appear soon).

World Bicycle Relief work in developing countries and believe that bikes are a life changing tool that helps increase attendance, improve performance, and help students show up ready to learn. We'll be raising money to help transform a community through the Power of Bicycles. For recipients, it is more than just a bike. It is a tool for economic and cultural empowerment.

Thyroid Cancer Support West are a patient led support group that provide help to anyone  affected by thyroid cancer. They're a small local charity to Bristol but they want to expand further afield so any money that we can raise for them will have really significant impact on the services they offer.