21 days in July – the 2005 Douglas Bader Foundation E2E ride re-blogged

Following a team talk from the Chair of the Douglas Bader Association, from Lady Bader, and from Phil Yates, the MD of the sponsor Otto Bock UK, sixteen of us set off from Penzance to the start proper at Land’s End. The total mileage for the day was 32, but counting only the miles back to the Youth Hostel in Penzance we’ve covered 20 miles on the first stage of the End to End. Not a bad ploy I think – gives everyone a chance to get into the swing of it and, for some, to get used to riding in a group. We have 6 lower limb amputees, 2 handcyclists, 1 upper limb amputee and 7 able bodied riders – a varied range of abilities. Tomorrow is billed as 48 miles of scenic opportunities…

I can’t remember now exactly when we set off from Penzance for the start at Lands End, but I think it was probably around lunchtime, maybe just before. This picture of me hanging around outside the meeting place came from an Olympus according to the jpeg info so must have been taken by my daughter. I’m not rolling a cigarette, just scrolling through some pictures on my Sony camera – I was a Sony boy back then. The bike is my once trusty Thorn Audax which died of a broken chain stay a few years later. A pre-start-ride photo outside the Queens Hotel in Penzance with Lady Bader flanked by organiser Kiera Roche and DBF CEO David Bickers, Otto Bock’s Phil Yates front left, and most of the rest of us in our Team Bader T-shirts. Here we are regrouping and enjoying the view just 3 miles into the pre-start-ride at Mousehole. And this is probably our first indecisive moment on the tour – arriving at a T-junction on the way to Lands End, waiting for someone to figure out whether it was a left or a right turn we required. I think at that time not many of the backroads in Cornwall were in the support van’s TomTom. Lovely day for it though. (You were here)

Fortunately Jim Bush still has the route sheets for the ride which has helped enormously in recording where we went. However, we didn’t always stick to the script so this is my best recollection. Click on the map for a higher res version, alternatively an interactive map can be found here along with the option to download the gpx track.