Cycling to Cyprus for Help the Heroes

I have lived in Raynes Park for 23 years. Latterly I worked as a part-time barman at the Edward Rayne. It`s also my local as it happens. Serves a very decent Beer.

Anyway, I have now reached that moment where I qualify to be an OAP - odd sort of feeling!

So to combat this I have decided to ride a bike to Newhaven. It starts on Saturday early morning of the April 30: a ferry to Dieppe, Marseille to Genoa, sideways and eastward to Trieste, southwards to Slovenia and Dubrovnik, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria and into Turkey, Istanbul and onwards to the South coast and finally the ferry to Kyrenia, northern Cyprus.

Why? I did mostly enjoy my time in the RAF and spent some of it in Cyprus. I can therefore relate to the charity `Help for Heroes`.

I would like to raise as much money as possible for those young men and women who have been affected so tragically by their experiences in their not so normal, day to day lives.

Accommodation? I will be camping out as I stop after maybe eight to 10 hours of cycling per day.

In total the bike rise is around 3,500 miles or so. I will be carrying my kit and buying ingredients on route. So it`s sort of sleeping, cooking, eating, and pedalling regime. Oh - and enjoying the views!

How long is this going to take? Maybe six to eight weeks, however the truth is I don`t really know! But it's a target.

Now my site is Travellerspoint.com and my blog is `Bikingbarman`. Daily updates will dependent dependent on WiFi availability, but I will try.

My e-mail for all those supportive messages is: bikingbarman@yahoo.com and importantly and not to forget what this is really about: justgiving.com/Brian-pilkington1 or perhaps as an alternative, use the H4H charity boxes at the Bar in `The Edward Rayne` (H4H event code is 20110216-4267-7807)

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