In October 2011 at the AGM of Biking for Children in Care Gill Timmis, founder and chairman, announced that the total funds raised from sponsorship for the Mosel Valley bike ride was a stunning £51,569 for the Who Cares? Trust.
Biking for Children in Care has, since 2002, raised over £400,000 - £381,733 for the Who Cares? Trust and a further £21,000 for children in Bulgaria and in Ethiopia. The funds all go to help improve the lives of young people in care.
Watch a slideshow of photographs from this year's bike ride:
By Pip Deverson (Biking for Children in Care)
The Mosel was first proposed at the 2010 AGM and the planning began. There were two recces to Germany to investigate the route, the accommodation and exactly where 60 people would get a decent meal without too many problems!
50 return tickets to Brussels on the Eurostar were booked six months in advance; the team had to organise support vehicles, ferry tickets and how to get 55 bikes to Luxembourg. They also had to decide where we would start and finish each day, where we would meet up with the support team for lunch stops and how to organise a tactical coach transfer on the third day.
At the end of June riders were making last minute trips to their favourite bike shop and quick checks on the weather forecast to help decide on what clothes to take.
The bikes were delivered to Twickenham and loaded onto the lorry, the support team left a day ahead and stayed overnight in Waterloo, south of Brussels and the site of the notorious battle in 1815 between Napoleon, Wellington and Blucher.The rest of the party met at St Pancras at 7.30am on Thursday 23rd June. We nearly lost one new recruit before leaving Twickenham and Dotty, who had travelled with her bike from Scotland and had completed every ride to date, had to cry off at the last minute struck down by a sudden and completely debilitating attack of sickness.
On arrival in Brussels the cyclists boarded a coach to take them to Steinfort in Luxembourg. They met up with the support team at 14.00hrs and the bikes were off-loaded, we then set off on the first leg of the ride. We cycled 21 miles that afternoon through the city of Luxembourg and across the massive and impressive Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge.
We were booked in at the Ibis Hotel, next to Luxembourg Airport. It was a gentle start but we had our first casualty of the trip when Louise fell off after locking handlebars whilst chatting. She suffered a grazed her leg and shoulder. Fortunately our Emergency Response Vehicle was on the scene very quickly and able to deal with the situation!
The Ibis was quite comfortable although they were not prepared for so many of us wanting to eat in the restaurant! Most of the group had decided to stay put causing the one waiter on duty and the chef to get very stressed! Next morning we cycled through Luxembourg towards the Mosel and the border with Germany. There were some gentle hills and one really steep downhill section. We saw the first of many vineyards and beautiful countryside littered with sheep and a few horses and then came our first stunning view of the Mosel.
Lunch stop was on the banks of the river at Remich which is quite a large town providing very acceptable loos and somewhere to purchase a new bike pump, we had already destroyed the one we had brought with us. By this point we were beginning to see the first signs that the Romans had been to the Mosel before us and it was a beautiful day, sunny but not too hot!
We arrived in the ancient town of Trier, which is chock full of Roman ruins, and to the hotel at around 4.30, making it a pretty short day! We locked the bikes up in the garage and a few members of the team went to investigate restaurants and night spots! Trier is said to be the oldest town in Germany and this was the weekend that Trier was celebrating. We walked through the town and found that there were 100’s, maybe 1,000’s, of people eating, drinking and enjoying live music from one of five stages set up in the town centre. There was also a bungee jump attached to a very tall crane! It seemed that the partying went on, all night long! There were several bleary eyed folk at breakfast the next morning!
Friday, we headed off towards Leiwen through the middle of the Mosel vineyards. There was some light drizzle during the morning but nothing to upset hardy cyclists and the country side was very pretty. The route followed the river for 26 miles. The purpose built cycle tracks made the going fairly easy so we could admire the vineyards and watch large barges transporting coal, sand and fuel up the river, as we notched up the miles.
There then followed several punctures all in the same tyre, maybe it was the same bit of grit or glass! Eventually the bike was abandoned and a spare pressed into service. The route took us through the glorious town of Bernkastel and the lunch stop was in Zeltingen in a car park. A group of us headed straight for the cafe as we had got rather cold and damp waiting for bike repairs to be carried out in the rain. The cyclists pressed on along the river through Traben Trarbach, a beautiful old town and Briedel to the town of Zell. There had been another disaster with the problematic bike (which had been bought new from Halfords) but the spare bike was doing a great job!
That afternoon after sixty miles of cycling the riders were very relieved to find a coach would take them the last nine miles up an extremely long and very steep hill to the Fortuna Hotel. The Fortuna had been discovered on the first recce in February, the owner Walter was wonderfully accommodating. He had been running the hotel for years, since before Hahn airport had been established and the airfield, formerly used in the 2nd World War, had been a base for the American Airforce.
Kate and I missed the coach trip as Kate had cut her leg open on a pedal and had to be taken to the nearest hospital for stitches (too much multi-tasking - answering the mobile phone while cycling!) Kate was a bit shaken up but recovered well enough to carry on the next day. The support vehicle had dropped us at the hospital and then headed back to support the cyclists. Pip and Kate returned by taxi although the driver had terrible trouble finding the hotel, as numerous roads were closed and/or being rebuilt.
Walther and his staff seemed delighted to have us stay and he insisted on playing his Wurlizter keyboard after dinner, and the kitchen staff made bread for us the following morning! That night speeches were made and awards announced – “the most impressive wipe-outs”, “best dressed”, “best markers”, “cyclist of the day” and the “most improved cyclists”, and Gill presented Walter with a Mosel Radweg cycle shirt. A few hardy late night drinkers discovered an Irish Bar down the road and carried on partying until the small hours. They looked a little jaded the next day.
Sunday was our fourth and last day of cycling, we had more than sixty miles to go along the Mosel river valley to the city of Koblenz and then along the Rhine for a few miles to Lahnstein. We had left Walter shortly after 8.00 am, the sun was shining and we knew there was a really long downhill stretch ahead of us. One cyclist got up to 35 miles per hour, others were very happy with 25mph whilst one or two wore out their brake pads trying to keep their speed below 20mph!
It was a gorgeous day and once we got back to the river there was a lot to see as we pedalled by. We marvelled at the vineyards all along the valley and wondered how they managed to gather the grapes on such a steep incline. There were villas, castles and pretty villages, and we met lots of Sunday cyclists, greeting us with ‘Gut Morgan’ as they passed by. We crossed the river several times keeping to the cycle path which for most of the way was separated from the road. There were many craft on the river including barges, jet skis, ferries, canoes and several very large cruise-ships!
We stopped at Beilstein in the morning and Treis Karten for lunch and then pressed on to Koblenz; the meeting point of the Rhine and the Mosel is marked by German Corner where we stopped for a photoshoot before heading a few miles further to Maximilians, which turned out to be a well known Koblenz brewery and restaurant. We had cycled almost 80 miles that day; it was really hot and not a whisper of a breeze. During the last 15 minutes one of our veterans managed to go right over his handlebars, his helmet prevented him from doing any real damage to his head, but Carol our first aider again moved into action and applied bandages to a grazed arm and shoulder. He will be known as the ‘Flying Judge’ from henceforth!
We reached our destination after 225 miles through Luxembourg and Germany, another stunning trip. There was some confusion when we finished as the riders headed for Maximilian’s bar for liquid refreshment. The hotel was a few miles up the hill and we were to eat at Maximilians that evening. In the end, very few people got up the hill to scrub up and change as the idea of rehydration and sustenance proved a rather more popular option. That evening there were more speeches and the support team were thanked for their efforts. We had clocked up 225 miles all together, our team of 53 cyclists aged between 18 and 68, and 9 people making up the support team had made their way from Steinfort to Lahnstein.
The cyclists led by David (self styled Herr Fahrt Fuhrer), Andy and John I’Anson. Mike had brought up the rear with Team Glaxo (they were seriously exhausted after partying day and night throughout the trip!). The support team, the three Johns, Paul, Peggy, Carol, Pam, Geoff and Barbara, made the trip go swimmingly smoothly as usual.
Gill thanked everyone again, and we thanked her, and we learnt that we had made 11 river crossings over the Mosel and the Rhine. It was a spectacular trip and an epic event. The total sponsorship raised for the Who Cares? Trust from the Mosel ride in 2011 was £51,569! We had a brilliant team, fourteen people cycled with us for the first time and we were really delighted to have Robin (Chair of Who Cares? Trust's Board of Trustees) and Jo join us for the first time. Jo did a magnificent job seeing as she wasn’t at all convinced that cycling was her thing when she first met us in March!
The Who Cares? Trust,
Kemp House, 152-160 City Road,
London EC1V 2NP, UK,
Telephone: 020 7251 3117
Email: mailbox@thewhocarestrust.org.uk
The Who Cares? Trust is a registered charity (No. 1010518). A Company limited by guarantee. Registered in London (No. 2700693). VAT Reg. No. 577853091
Charity web design by Fat Beehive - Main photo by epidemya
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