When Laurence completed this year’s Great British Bike Ride (GBBR) at Twickenham we’re sure most of the 60,000 crowd that day heard him say that he would never complete the ride again. Surprising then to see Laurence announced as one of eight Auditel consultants who will form Team Auditel in this epic challenge next year.

Since the ride in September Laurence and Auditel’s Business Development Director Ed Brewer have been busy rounding up support for Auditel’s network of 170 consultants. When asked Laurence said “The ride this year provided me with memories and friendships I will treasure for years to come and I wanted to share this opportunity with colleagues in 2011. I have been amazed by the interest and support for the event amongst our network and can’t wait to complete the ride with the Auditel Team next September and hopefully raise a lot of money for Auditel’s nominated charity, Help for Heroes, on the way”.

The team were introduced to rippling applause at the Auditel National Conference last week and our first official team picture shows the Magnificent Seven present on the day.

The riders will once again face the challenge of riding the 355 miles from Land’s End to Twickenham between 30th August and 3rd September 2011 raising money for 4 nominated charities. The first ever GBBR this year raised over £100,000 for charity and it is hoped that 2011 will be even more successful.

If you want to know how our preparations are coming along please keep checking back to our posts on this blog for regular updates.

There was no prouder person in the ground than me, to see you all enter the stadium to the well deserved applause and appreciation of seventy thousand rugby fans.

One rider commented that at some stages through the week while he climbed the endless hills in Cornwall and Devon, that I was probably the most disliked person in the land.  But at the moment he walked around Twickenham and to hear and see genuine applause from the crowd I was his hero for arranging such a fantastic event.

One rider even called me fairly early on Sunday morning and said that he wanted to be the first to tell me how much he had enjoyed the challenge and the camaraderie that he had experienced in the last five days. He then said ‘I want you to listen to this as it will always be in my mind’ and he played the bugle reveille down the phone.  Which I thought was genius.

Somebody up there was defiantly looking after us as the weather could not have been any better. I think, who ever was responsible, said to themselves ‘ok’ you can have good weather during the day. But the deal is, you will freeze at night’. We will take that deal any day.

Please remember that it was not only me that made the event work it was a small team of dedicated individuals which included Freckly, Darren, Will, Carol (Admin) and in the week itself Lex and Mike.  Not to forget all the volunteers that done an extraordinary job.

If you had asked last Sunday morning would I do it all again, the answer would have been a large NO.  But after my personal early morning bugle call from the unknown riderI soon changed my mind.

Photos

We are working on the CD for the photos and should be available on the site pretty soon.  The CD will have a cost and all profits will go to the benefitting charities.  You will receive an email when on the site.

The Rugby Paper

In Sundays issue of The Rugby Paper you will see a full page report on the challenge. The Rugby Paper is available in all newsagents and will remain in the shops until Wednesday.

Great British Bike Ride 2011

We are currently working hard in setting up next years event and we have already seventy five riders registered.  Anybody that rode this year will obviously get first chance to enter in 2011.

Feed Back Form

In any event it is key to get feedback from the participants.  Please see a short form attached. I would appreciate if you spent a small amount of time helping me improve the event in 2011.

Kind regards and speak soon

Barry
Event Organiser