Tour de Amateurs

So the adventure starts here.

I thought I'd start the account of our London to Paris adventure off with a brief roll call of the other titles we were considering for the blog. In no particular order we had: King of the Foothills (my personal favourite), Paris or Bust, The French Connection etc.

We kept with Tour de Amateurs in a nod to the french inspired theme of the trip and also to acknowledge the novice nature of the endeavour.

Anyway this "blog" (is there not a prettier word for this type of posting?) is here to track the build up and hopefully successful completion of our independently organised and run London to Paris bike ride/tour. I'm hoping that my brothers and fellow participants will add to this with there own experiences.

I will end this first posting with the reason I decided to do this. Firstly, because I was inspired by a spirit of adventure to see the world on a bike after watching a documentary of a guy called Mark Beaumont who unsupported cycled around the world in 195 days. See www.markbeaumontonline.com or www.pedallingaround.com

I was blown away by the feat and the sheer scale of the endeavour. I also thought "How exciting is that!!". To travel the whole world under your own steam.

Secondly, I'm genuinely excited about sharing the experience with my brothers and one of my best friends riding alongside me knowing that in 4 days we will be riding into Paris. I can't wait.

Thirdly, it's a great way to raise money for charity. We are doing this for Macmillan Cancer Support and between use we hope to raise over £4,000. We have decided not to do this journey via the usual charity event as when we looked into it we felt that the organisers took too much of the total raised for themselves and we wanted all the money to go directly to Macmillan. Please see my charity page at:

www.justgiving.com/spencerhurley1