dead parrot riding a bike through scotland

[hedgerow pete]

Morning all,

Whilst you were all sleeping on tuesday night the wife and I were up to silly o’clock because of our son.

If you have not been told officially yet, he decided to have a brain tumour last year. Kids!!!

Any way now that he has fully recovered he started his end to end on tuesday night, coach up to Inverness and the train to Thurso then peddling all the way down and if that’s not enough the idiot is also going to do Ben Nevis for a laugh on the way past!

So why does this warrant an email from me, simple I want some money off you.

so I want all of you to stick your hands in your pockets or in this case credit cards and pay pal and to go to my sons web site and to donate a fiver for him.

It’s not much to ask for and considering what he has been through, it’s very little indeed.

Do not bother sending me the money, its easier to send it direct to help for heroes. The wife and I are just the logistic managers and financiers of the project, it’s you that makes the difference to Tim and the people involved.

The ride proper starts on Wednesday morning and is expected to last around two weeks, depending on how many punctures he gets.

I will send another email out when he finishes to let everyone know how he has got on and after mum and dad have done a ten hour return drive to lands end to collect him and his mate.

So if anyone sees two lads cycling past over the next couple of weeks one of which looks to be balancing a dead parrot on his head, don’t forget to wave your wallets at them

Please be generous

Peter and Alison and Tim (he’s the one with the dead parrot on his head and the flat tyre)

 

[hedgerow pete]

tonights sit rep

the parrot landed at invernes at 3 pm to day and took the train up to thurso and cycled to john a groats. thats the easy bit, dad on the other hand has just spent the last four hours trying to sort out the problems, thats the problem with scotland its so flippin far away.

any way he has had two big punctures all ready so we are now running on the emergency spare inner tubes and he has bust the bike pump, so if we get another flat tomorrow am we are walking fron john o groats to lands end.

we have managed to find bike shop peoplein thurso and scrabster for him to find spares hopefully but if he cant his next place to try is ullapool or fort william and thats a long way without a bike pump !!

and just to cap things off the other lad who was going with him has managed to tear his knee tendons going to the train this morning so has had to come back, so tim is doing it solo now which means the spares , ie pumps and inner tubes they could have shared has also gone,

to say i am trying to find hair to pull out is an understatement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

must admit it times like this that the internet does come to the front and who use full it can be

ho almost forget to add the solar powered phone charger to keep his phone topped up has also broken so if we can source a replacement by fort william its going to have to be smoke signals and carrier pigeons to keep in touch or the old mans going to drive up to fort william over night on friday,

kids dont the drive you bloody crazy at times
love pete

 

[hedgerow pete]

i still have not worked out how to post piccys properly so have a look at this forum to see the dead parrot picture

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12068

 

[robsan77]

cant see that pic as not a member on that forum

 

[hedgerow pete]

yep sorry my fault complete monkey when it comes to the internet etc, apparently i will have to open a photo uploading internet thingy account and then i have to post a url on this forum so people can look at it, i have spent an hour at lunch time trying to work out and gave up on a site called rapidshare and i am awaiting instructions from a frien on where to go to next,

i will see if i can find the news paper report on line and post that instead, sorry all, i will try and sort it out tonight for you all

peter

 

[hedgerow pete]

http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/midla ... _page.html

here we are peoples, this is tim and what he is upto for the next two weeks.

so please can i still ask if i could part you lot with a few quid or if you happen to see a lad on his own cycling past whilst balancing a dead parrot on his head say hi, wave your wallet at him or offer the lad a decent meal, peter

 

[hedgerow pete]

tonight he has done 60 odd miles and is at a place called bonar bridge about 30 mile north of inverness on the east coast, been a glorious scottish summers day today so we are now soaked to the skin and fed up with being blown about by the wind

dont you just love scotland in the summer

 

[gsidford]

Well worth supporting, I have had a 6 year old who was treated out of Birmingham for cancer as well (he is 11 now). Great to see he is doing se well.

 

[hedgerow pete]

well tonight he is camped a mile away from the nessy centre near inverness. and has spent the whole day dry and wind free, which means only one thing, no see ums massive flocks of them. he must have covered him self in tomatoe ketchup, lol

he is off down the A82 to fort william tomorrow and if there is time he will try to do ben nevis aswell and after that he is hoping to do the a82 to Alexandria toward lock lomand

we have sorted out the solar phone charger at inverness, sad how some firms wont want to help and others bend over back wards to help us

 

[hedgerow pete]

ok two updates as one, due to fully grown hedgerow off dancing this weekend, so saturday he did do the ben nevis walk again and just like last time she refused to show off and the clouds were in for the day.

after that tim cycled down to glen coe for the night.

but get this on sunday night when we eventualy got through to hime he is in john stone for the night, for those that dont know he is basicly on the top west side of glasgow thats a good 70 miles done for the day, tomorrow is a rest day so dad is going to spend the day on the phone organising a b and b at dumfries for him so he can get the bike tweeked and his bum softend. so far he has gone through two tubs of sudacrem to prevent bikers nappy rash.

and that means on wednesday morning about 10 am ish he should be back over the wall and in blighty and thats roughly a third of the journey done.

 

[hedgerow pete]

he rolled off the wall this morning back into civilization and some decent hot sunny weather, unforunutly too hot and being a true male weston decided on topping up the tan would be cool, so we are now slightly sunburnt and crispy on the left side and pink on the right side,

we have now had a complete failure of the mobile phone , we think it got too damp whilst in scotland so we are now doing the call box to dad and the following return call 5 secs later, good old dad !!!

we spoke to him at appleby in westmoorland at 3pm and he was hoping to push through to kirkby longdale for tonight rest stop which is a fair old distance of about 88miles

we cant quite put out finger on when he will be in a certain place because he does like to have his scenic tours when the moods strike so the best we can say is that he should be around telford way for friday at this rate, he is hoping to hit wigan way tomorrow night, this puts teleford in reach for friday and then its a quick car trip hope for us to go and find hime friday /saturday, i have a load of bits for the bike which i will replace and then its a mumsie hug and a mumsies nosh bag and hope fully we are looking at him being at bristol around sunday time. so taunton is roughly planned for monday /tuesday ish

 

[hedgerow pete]

well as of last night we spent the evening in clithroe or just outside it. i think northside some where.

he is getting a little fed up with the hilly bits now. you dont realise how uneven blighty is untill you cycle it,

he is aiming for iron bridge today with a mum and dad greetting party for when he arrives, he is then going to spend saturday at home, feeding up whilst dad rebuilds the bike for him, its quite surprissing how little some bike stuff lasts at times, but then again most bike stuff is only realy designed for commutting not for doing 500miles in a week whilst fully loaded.

and then saturday evening we are going to run him back to were we collected him, chalk mark "X" on the road to make sure!

then its the last week to finish off, he is still looking at a thursday finish, which i think is blooming wonderfull,

if the old hedgerow was doing it after a week i would still be pushing the bike past inverness by now!!!!!!!!!!!!

theres no way my bum could have taken that sort of abuse.

 

[hedgerow pete]

we are having a mumsy night tonight, i went off to telford to collect the smelly hairy one and after a massive nosh and i do mean nosh, she went mental as the baby is coming back tonight, two massive pizzas, chips , kebab meat, nan breads and larger by the bucket,

he is now in the shower scraping off several layers of traffic grime and fluff

so todays distance was clithero to teleford which is well impressive

any way tonight dad has dismanteled the bike ready to rebuild when i get back from work saturday afternoon.

we also have the royal visit booked, with great gran ma her self turning up saturday afternoon

i have booked in with his nibs about coming down to our beekeepers arms pub at 8pm on saturday night for an hour, so he can thank the many many great people out here in person,

and lastly dont worry he ant packed it in mummy is kicking him out the car at sunday morning back at the telford conema to continue onwards

 

[hedgerow pete]

well we hoofed him out the house on sunday again and back to telford to restart the great bike run.

not bad for a first day back with every thing tightend up.
telford to stroud in one hop

and yesterday monday we had another tim divertion as instead of whizzing through bristol we stopped off and went banksy hunting instead so last night we stayed just outside bristols south side. but this is the good thing about traveling on your own is the fact you can do these things
__________________

 

[hedgerow pete]

banksy hunting finished with he has also started to suffer from boredom so he thought he will try pushing on a bit today for a wednesday finish, he spoke to us at lunch and had just got to taunton and has par in mind for tonight with a very late finish which puts him about 60 mile away to tomorrows finish.


the whole family apart from me is now in mobiliasion mode and is decamping south at stupid oclock on wednesday, we were hoping to get the people down at the lands end centre to help meet him but they have decided not to answer phone calls or emails for the last week so i think they have stopped doing it now down there so we have instead organise sister and mum and great grand dragon ( mother in law) and friends so we should make up for it

the only downer we are having with him at the moment is that with all the moors to cross or circle the hills are killing the legs now and unlike scotland when they were fresh he is feeling tired now and they are becoming hard work for him. but with a hundred odd miles left to do and several hundred done the boy ant done back by any measure

 

[31bb3]

can you not add the link to the charity on your posting ??

 

[hedgerow pete]

well today i am the BIG BIG BAD WOLF,

the whole family hates me that much no one is speaking to me, i quite enjoy the peace and quiet realy

any way tims target today was from moretonhampstead to lands end but due to a couple of punctures he was short by 12 miles last night, so today got up early to do the final leg but after speaking to him at three he was still now where near st austell to i pulled the plug on it, so the whole family left sidmouth to go to cornwall for nothing so every one hates me, except tim who needed the rest and for someone else to take the blame.

he had not realised how hilly cornwall is and so far there are more ups than downs, also his knee is starting to weaken from the last 950 miles, so tonight tim is in st austell with mumsy having a family feed and a great grand dragon flapping around him, before finding somewhere for a last nights camp

everyone, bar tim is back off to sidmouth tonight and everyone decamps back down for a mid afternoon finally of the dead great parrot trek tomorrow, i have asked his mum to lighten every thing off the back of the bike tonight for him as its a little wet and so doubling the load weight, so hopefully all he will have tomorrow is a small tent and thats it.

so hopefully on friday we can upload some of the pictures for everyone and again many many thanks for all of you we have managed to seperate from a few quid.

to all of tims supporters many many thanks for your hard work and moneys, pete

3PM


tim finished at spot on 3pm today thursday, completley cream crackered and very tired, mum has dumped tim and the well worn bike into the car and is not driving the four hours home from cornwall to brum, we have a massive banner outside the house as you would do and plenty of cold beers in the fridge.

again i can not thank you all , for your support and help with donations


tim has a charity web page on help the heros it is

www.bmycharity.com/thecrazzybikers123

we are not asking for people to donate loads just what ever is spare at the moment, i must admit tho if i had known how exspencive it was for dads to fund tim doing this i would have put a twenty in the tin and told him to sling his hook. lol

 

[Aleman]

That is really good news, glad that he has finished.

. . . . . Want to set him up for his next challenge . . . .


. . . . The Pre Tour de France :shock:

Basically you ride the Tour course the day before the Tour goes through.

I saw it a couple of years ago when a load of cancer survivors did it, along with some publicity for Armstrongs LiveStrong campaign . . . Watching the tour this year, I realised that I am just the wrong side of insane to think about doing it :hmm:

 

[hedgerow pete]

in two weeks time his has decided to do the coast to coast, its only 140 miles so he is going to do it over two days, well he has gone up and down so you might as well do side to side,

he does like the idea of doing one next year in aid of the childrens hospital where his brain tumor was removed and the idea is either straight across france or top of holland down to normandy

but he waiting his bum to stop glowing bright red

 

[graysalchemy]

Well done that man :clap: :clap: :clap:.

My nephew has also recently completed John o Groates/ landsend. I sympathise what he means about the hills in cornwall. I did half that trip when I was 17 I did manchester to lands end and back again and it was a killer in Somerset, north Devon and Cornwall. We went up the hill at Porlock in Somerset I don't remember much about it but I stayed their last year and tried walking up it and wondered how on earth I ever managed to cycle up it. Well it was 25 yrs ago and my legs were a lot fitter.

What a fantastic achievement.