charity

Day 5: Katwijk to De Koog

| tom@Childsi

Just a quick update tonight as Julien has again stuggled to get a good phone signal.

Julien set off this morning at 9.30 and ended up doing a 5 mile loop due to some poor Dutch signposting. He then pushed on to Haarlem but could not find anywhere decent to stop for lunch!

Luckily the weather stayed sunny so he rode on to Alkmaar which had some gorgeous views. After speaking to some locals Julien was advised to travel to Texel so he cycled 30 miles north to Den Helder and then caught the ferry to Texel.

Julien then continued on to Da Koog where he found another campsite by the sea to pitch up in for the night.

Unfortunately he then found out that the onward ferry is not currently working so he will have to retrace the last 15 miles tomorrow – bit of a bummer!

To speed things up Julien has decided to cut through Holland tomorrow rather than continue cycling along the coast.

Julien has been having a problem getting email to work on his phone so I will be adding images to the site from the web until he is able to send his own pictures to me. As soon as Julien sends me his own pictures I will upload them to his Flickr page.

Here is the day’s Google Map and please also visit the Child’s i Foundation and Julien’s Just Giving page.

Day 4: Haamstede Burgh to Katwijk

| tom@Childsi

Day four went very well for Julien. The weather picked up staying sunny at around 22 degrees all day and as a result he was able to get many more miles under his belt. Julien says that Holland is an amazing country to ride in, with excellent cycle paths through and alongside picturesque fields.

After a busy morning cycling along the Dutch coast Julien stopped in for lunch at a cafe in Stellendam where he reports he had a first class burger!

After lunch he continued on, making it to Rotterdam where he came across a special escalator for cyclists and pedestrians that leads underneath a large river and up the other side. Luckily he managed to utilise the escalator despite his very heavy bike!

After passing Rotterdam Julien found a great campsite surrounded by sand dunes at Katwijk aan Zee where he has decided to stay for the night. The good weather has given Julien a chance to dry his wet clothes from the last few days and begin to develop a rather patchy suntan!

Tomorrow Julien will touch the famous North Sea cycle route and continue on his way to Nordkapp.

For those of you following the route here is today’s Google Map. Please show you support by visiting the Child’s i Foundation and Julien’s Just Giving page.

Day 3: De Panne to Haamstede Burgh

| tom@Childsi

Day three and just a quick update today as Julien is having trouble getting a phone signal so our communications have been limited to text messages!

It sounds like Julien has done incredibly well today, covering 84 miles across the northcoast of Belgium and making it into Haamstede Burgh in Holland. This whilst contending with heavy thunderstorms and hail. Holland’s well known flat landsacape meant that he had no cover – ouch!

Julien has found that the roads in Holland are excellent for cycling and a real improvement over those in the UK. If the weather permits and Julien keeps up the fast pace tomorrow he hopes to get past Rotterdam and close in on Amsterdam. I’m sure he will make it!

Google Map of Today’s Route.

Please remember why Julien is undertaking this epic journey and visit his Just Giving page and the Child’s i Foundation website. Thank you!

Day 2: Faversham to De Panne

| tom@Childsi

Julien again faced bad weather and useless maps as he continued his cycle to the coast. Much like yesterday Julien had to make a 30 mile detour off the planned route to get back on track. This meant that he only just made the 2 o’clock ferry to Dunkirk. The rain died down as he crossed the channel but sadly picked up again as he set foot in Dunkirk.

Julien got off at Dunkirk along with a large number of trucks which he had to cycle alongside until he found an alternative route. Eventually he ended up getting a bit lost again and kept ending up back on the motorway leading out of Dunkirk. After a while, Julien decided to pull into a shop where he used his best French to communicate with the locals – one of whom cycled ahead of Julien for around 6 miles to the main road into De Panne!

After around 20km Julien made it to the town of De Panne. As the bad weather persisted he decided to spend the night in a local hotel. Julien is hoping for better weather and the chance to camp out in the open tommorrow. The good news is that Belgium has great cycle ways, so from here on in, progress should be a bit quicker!

Please click the buttons on the right to sponsor Julien and help out the Child’s i Foundation. Thank you.

Google Map Day Two

Day 1: London to Faversham

| tom@Childsi

Hello, my name is Tom Phillips. I will be updating Julien’s blog with news from the road as he travels from London to Nordkapp, the most northern point of mainland Europe. Julien is embarking upon this epic journey of around 2,500 miles, to raise money and support for the wonderful charity the Child’s i Foundation. So please do your bit by donating money on Julien’s Just Giving site and by visiting the Child’s i website. Thank you!

So on to the first day – unfortunately things haven’t gone exactly according to plan! This morning Julien discovered that his bike and gear was going to be a little too heavy for such a long trip. Once some excess baggage was removed Julien set out only to discover his speedometer had broken, this was then followed by a puncture on the rear tyre of his brand new bike!

To add to this Julein had to contend with some very inacurate ordinance survey maps which had him cycling down dead ends and alleyways. To catch up on his mile target Julien decided to veer off the planned route and head along the A226 for some quicker riding. So there weren’t too many exciting sights on the way today, but Julien did mention that he saw some great views whilst cycling through Erith in South London. As the weather turned nasty late this afternoon Julien decided to forgo camping and has instead settled down in a B&B just outside Faversham.

Overall he clocked up 70 miles today – not bad going considering the slow start. Let’s hope for a better day tomorrow as Julien catches the ferry to Dunkirk and begins his journey across Belgium.

A Google Map of the journey so far!

Thank you to Innovation Norway!

| Zapfly

Today, I was extremely fortunate to speak with some of the extremely lovely people at Innovation Norway.  A friend and former colleague of mine from Head London, John Parnell, put me in touch with Heidi and Christine at Innovation Norway, who are part of the team responsible for amongst other things, the excellent Norwegian tourism website, www.visitnorway.com and also a WordPress blog for Visit Norway.

After discussing my trip, Christine placed me in touch with Knut, who runs the Tourism office in Tromso.  Together, they have been able to shed more light and help me more in one day than a week of internet trawling and book reading.  Christine has been sending me lots of useful advice about where to go and what to see.  I hope to visit Sámi Adventures, which is hope to spend some time with some indigenous Sámi people and envelop myself in the Sámi culture.  Christine also recommended that I stop in Kautokeino and visit Juhls’ Silver Gallery.

My aim is to meet as many locals as possible and gather a better understanding of the Norwegian and Sámi culture.  I only hope my photographs due justice to them.

The icing on the cake was Christine’s very kind offer on behalf on Innovation Norway, to help me on the return leg of my charity cycle ride, by sponsoring my flight home.  So, here’s to you all at the Innovation Norway, thank you so much for all your help and generosity.

Here are some useful Norwegian websites for the northern region of the country:
www.visitnorway.com/uk – Innovation Norway’s comprehensive website
www.visitnorthcape.com –Finnmark Tourist Information website
www.visittromso.no – Visit Tromsø’s website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kautokeino – Wikipedia information

One week and counting…

| Zapfly

Time is ticking away as the ensuing departure date is now less than a week away.  Even though I have been preparing for this trip for ages, I am stick racked with anticipation.  Concerns of the overall requirements of the ride interlaced with daily issues such as shopping, whilst not having my kit stolen or finding somewhere to camp.  All in all, there are many issues to contend with.

In the grander scheme of things, I hope that this ride is a success.  By this, not only do I mean achieving the loft target of cycling 2800 miles to a vary sparsely populated are of the world but I also mean raise finds for the charity I have dedicated this ride to, Child’s I Foundation.  So far, I have raised just under £350 on my Just Giving page, which is a good start.  I hope that as I continue, people read about the various adventures I am likely to have en route as my blog will be maintained by Tom from Child’s I, in my absence.  I would love to hit my target amount of £2,500, so please keep reading this blog and make a donation if possible.  All of the money is destined to help kids in Uganda.  I am paying for all of my own expenses on this trip!

I have been testing all of my kit prior to my departure and so far, so good.  I have to make sure I can maintain my MSR stove as I know occasionally they can gunk up.  The biggest challenge will be to decide how much stuff to take along with me.  In the first couple of weeks, the temperature will hopefully remain in the warm twenties.  However, the further I travel up the spin of Sweden, the cool the weather will become.  Indeed, the figures I have seen for night time temperatures for Nordkapp and the north coast of Norway, even in mid summer, are around 4 degrees Celsius.  The weather is also likely to me inclement but that should only add to the drama of the journey.

It would be great to hear from any one if they have experience of travelling in this part of the world as so little has been written about it.  That said, hopefully my blog will be a useful place for other people considering this journey as a portal of information in due course.

Sports Programme Manager

| Zapfly

Along with my various photographic endeavours, I like to combine my work with expedition style material. This can range from mountaineering to trekking, or in more recent times, long distance cycle rides. To that end, I like to complete at least one sponsored ride per year.

This year, I may well end up completing at least two. The reason for this increase in altruism is mainly due to joining forces with a new charity called the Childs i Foundation (CiF). They are raising funds to build an orphanage in Uganda for all the parentless children who are abandoned after the recent turmoil the country has suffered. I have been given the lofty title of Sports Programme Manager, which is nice.

So, one of my new jobs is to create some exciting sports programmes to raise money for the charity. First on the cards for me is getting my plans together for this summer’s ride, which I shall be doing for CiF. There are a couple of plans afoot at present, both of which involve Scandinavia. Pete and Mary should be joining me, so that will be really exciting. At present, we are deciding whether to head to Iceland or cycle from London via a ferry journey from Harwich to Esbjerg in Denmark, via Sweden and Finland up to Nordkapp, at the northern tip of Norway. Either option should be exciting but time will be the critical determinant in the end.

The other ride I will be looking at completing will be a quick four day stint from London to Paris. This will be the first ride that I organise on behalf of Childs i Foundation, so hopefully it will prove to be a popular ride. If everyone is altruistic in their approach, giving their time to help put the even together rather than just raise funds in isolation, this should be both a very accessible and comparatively inexpensive endeavour for volunteers.

More on this once I have looked into it further with my lovely CiF colleagues.

Lost weekend in Guernsey

| Zapfly

I was fortunate enough to be in Guernsey last weekend. The main purpose of the visit was to see my good friends Mary and Pete. We had a lot of things to organise. Firstly, about 60GB of HD video footage we shot on our Le Jog ride last year. Thanks to opaque technology and the need to have multiple external hard drives capturing the output of huge files via various video programmes, we spent most of the weekend indoors, struggling with the computer.

Fortunately, the results from the first MTS file transfers look good. Once we have managed to drop out the videos as manageable QT files, I hope to upload a selection of 1 minute files for each of the daily rides for the Le Jog ride to YouTube and link into this blog. More on this when I get round to it.

The other big focus of the weekend was to decide upon the timing and location of this year’s big ride. I have elected to raise money for a charity called Child’s i Foundation, set up by some of my Endemol colleagues. There is plenty of great information available about various charitable endeavours on their website, which is another WordPress blog like this one.

So far, we have chosen two rides that we would like to select one to undertake from:
1) London to Nordkapp (Norway) via Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. This would be an epic 2500 mile ride, taking us well past the Arctic Circle.
2) Circumnavigate Iceland, which would be considerably shorter at a mere 1,200 – 1,500 miles.

I would love to do both rides but due to various fiscal and time limitations for all parties concerned, this is highly unlikely. What it will ultimately boil down to is timing. When there are several people involved with varying calendar restrictions, finding the sweet spot is complicated.

Does anyone have experience of either of these cycle rides?