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The Cambridge to Cambridge Charity bike ride for the Outward Bound Trust

The Cambridge Building Society's annual "Tour de Branch" charity cycle ride took on a new challenge this year. Instead of cycling one of the many the routes around our local branch network, myself and three members from the IT department took on a challenge to cycle from the small village of Cambridge, in Gloucester, back to "our" Cambridge. This annual event has been a huge success in the past three years, raising money for many local charities. This year was the turn of the Outward Bound Trust as our chosen charity, who were able to guarantee our sponsorship money would be used to support the local community, something we were very happy about.

The crazy plan was hatched by the men in IT a long time ago, and preparations went very well. My daily commute to work on my bike served as good training, and we even managed a few longer weekend cycle rides in an effort to see if our legs really could handle the distance.

The weekend rolled round and we set off towards Gloucester, planning to get there to watch the football match in the afternoon, then get straight to sleep, ready for our midnight alarm call to start the ride home. The sleeping part of this plan was where we encountered our first problem. How can you sleep at 6pm, next to a main road in a very warm travel lodge when you're all very excited about the challenge ahead???? The answer is, you can't, so at 12.30 with barely any sleep we started our bike ride.

Now the travel lodge was three miles closer to home than our official start point, so after six miles of cycling, we were back where we had slept and finally eating into the total miles’ figure. The first part of the journey was something pretty special, cycling up and down the hills around Stroud, winding towards the A40 to Oxford. These hills would be a challenge in daylight, but descending them in a pack of four, with our brakes on, trying to stay in the light of our support van was quite a challenge in the pitch black.

The A40 seemed entirely down hill so our top speeds were reached as we headed towards the outskirts of Oxford. By 5am we had cycled the toughest section of the ride, completed 50 miles and we stopped for our first "proper" 15-minute break in a village close to Witney. This stop may have been one reason why the next 15 miles were like hiking through soup. We dropped down into some dales that were full of mist. Only when cycling this sort of distance do you start to notice the subtle differences the weather and road surfaces make to the ease of pedalling. These 15 miles were really tough and at this point I started to wonder whether the next 100 miles could actually be completed. We made a note to try to stop more often but for less time, as when the legs cool down it's really hard to warm back up again at 6am.

We pressed on towards Buckingham and Milton Keynes. At around 1lam the sun finally broke through for good and we could ditch all of our jackets and warm gear and cycle in some light clothing. This, and the fact our bodies were much warmer made the next 20 miles into Milton Keynes fly by, and at midday we were in the services on the A421 tucking into some much needed" fast food". Milton Keynes was quite a landmark on the route home, but with some hills around Bedford, and ­46 miles still to bike in around 4 hours, the hard work wasn't over yet.

We set off again and the A421 is now my least favourite road in England. There is no room for cars to pass and the scenery after Milton Keynes isn't the most exciting either. Saddle sore had started to set in, and the miles just couldn't reduce quickly enough. The bypass around Bedford was equally tough and when we hit the section of the A1 before St Neots we finally felt like we were on the home straight. The fight for the power bars had already begun in Milton Keynes, every time you ate one, you were guaranteed 15 minutes of good cycling. The problem was it took 20 minutes to eat a whole one, not the easiest things to chew on! With another one of these inside, the traditional Cambridgeshire head wind wasn't going to stop us and the A428 was soon under our belts too.

The finish at the Head Office on Newmarket Road was a carefully planned moment, they wanted us there at around 4 — 4.30pm so we duly obliged, rounding the final corner at 4.35pm to a wonderful reception. It was a joy to "dismount", grab a beer and a hot dog and not think about turning the pedals, but a shame that it had finished.

On behalf of the Building Society, and the Outward Bound Trust I would like to thank everyone who generously sponsored the ride, our support team for protecting us all the way, my partners on the ride for their company and Lucozade for inventing an essential sports drink.

So what can we do next year to beat this? Watch this space..............

Colin Oakman