Peter challenges Rachel to ride his penny farthing challenge with him.

Hello Diaries, it’s Peter Berry here.

I’ve just been out on a long cycle ride and it’s sort of inspired me to ring the diaries. Physical exercise, cycling and that sort of thing, it lights my mind up like a little fireworks display. And I got thinking, I thought I’ll do an entry about how I’m getting on with the training for my challenge. We’re doing anything up to 50 miles a day, all ready for the challenge which is the last week in June. I’m starting on Sunday and as you all know I’m cycling 4 counties of Great Britain – Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, all the way around Norfolk. It’s something like three hundred and something miles. And I’m doing it on a penny farthing! All in aid of young dementia.

Now, I’ve got to say at this point, this is all Rachel Niblock’s fault. She is entirely responsible for this insane thing that I’m doing. She is the one who rekindled, re-enthused, reignited my fire with penny farthings last year. I used to ride them many years ago, 30 years ago and even dabbled in a little bit of penny farthing racing and then for 27 ish years I never rode them once. And then I had this idea of riding one and Rachel, bless her heart, got her good friend to bring along his original penny. Unfortunately that didn’t go quite as planned I did have the odd little tumble and as we call in the ordinary or penny farthing world, a ‘header’ and they’re never nice. But after that I got thinking and I thought, ‘you know what, never give up, Peter’. So I went out and I bought one and I rode it. And I ride it very successfully now. Like I say, anything up to fifty miles a day in training.

Riding something like a penny farthing is, I don;t know how, it’s so refreshing, it’s so good. And I often think that the bonds of dementia can’t hold me back while I out cycling and that’s important to me.

So I’ll give you a few more updates as the weeks go on about how the training’s going. But you know what, I could jump on that penny farthing and I could start the challenge today, now, I feel that good about it. As long as there are no strong headwinds we’ll be fine. And I think, I think actually, that I should say to the diaries now that because this is all Rachel’s fault I think she should join us on the longest section of the road. Just as punishment [laughs].

Anyway, thank you all for listening. And if I remember, and I do hope I do, I shall try and make notes I will leave another update next week.
Thank you. Bye.