Two thousand miles!

2000, 2000, 2000!   After making myself a bike out of two half bikes, bought at the Police auction of bikes found in the river, hanging on railings and generally discarded, I taught myself how to use the gears and started riding to work in Cambridge. I was introduced to 'sunday bike rides' by a friensd and started practicing to ride further than the five miles to work.  I would cycle round the villages I found on an Ordnance Survey map, and cycled to work the long-way- -round, that involved a hill or two. By the end of the summer I had done four 'rides' for national charities and raised £400 for Help the Aged, the World Wildlife Fund, British Heart and Oxfam.  Emboldened, and always up for a challenge, I entered the 1992 London to Cambridge 'event' - a properly organised affair, going by train to the start in London, signing in, lining up at a start line and with marshalls to point out the route at road junctions.      I pedalled along, conscious ...