The 5K for £5K Challenge

As you will see from my 2013 – Scotland page, I am planning to ride round Scotland this year.  In doing so, I hope to raise £5,000 by riding 5,000 km, for the BMCRC Benevolent Fund which helps fallen riders and their families.

The only trouble is, I can’t do it all at once.  I’m going to have to do it over a series of short trips as I got adopted by a gorgeous little black and white cat in 2011, called Cozy, and I can’t leave him alone for too long.

Now, when you do the maths, it gives me a couple of options:

  • 5000 km ÷ 10 trips = 500 km per trip (310 miles)
  • 5000 km ÷ 20 trips = 250 km per trip (155 miles)

Then I’ve got to think about how many weekends there are between now and the end of “summer” season (and I use “summer” very loosely here – Scotland isn’t known for its scorching sunshine and soaring temperatures).  So realistically, I’m looking at April until the end of October.  That’s seven months.  So, by my calculations, this would give me:

  • 7 months x 4 weekends in each month = 28 weekends, or
  • 5000 km ÷ 28 weekends = 178.57 km per weekend

So let’s round things up a bit (to allow for not every weekend being possible):

  • 5000 km ÷ 20 weekends = 250 km per trip

Given Oban is only 100 miles from Glasgow and only takes a couple of hours to get to, this is more than do-able, in fact, 15 trips of 350 km would probably do it quite easily.

So now all I have to do is decide where to go. Here’s my Top 5 list of places I want to visit:

  • Cape Wrath and John O’Groats
  • Orkney and Shetland
  • Inner and Outer Hebrides
  • Wester Ross (and that road with all the hairpin bends)
  • Islay and Jura


View Scotland in a larger map
Instantly, I can see none of these trips fall into the 350 km in a weekend category, so it looks as if using the law of averages isn’t really going to help here.  I guess the main thing is that I know the ultimate goal and just knock off as many miles as I can each time.

I’ll be charting my progress on this blog, so please come back soon and see how I’m doing.  And remember, if you’d like to make a donation to my appeal, you can do so by clicking the image below:

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