ON a warm and sunny Saturday morning, nine brave souls including a tandem duo set off from Thornbury Table Tennis Club aiming to visit every Bristol and District Table Tennis Association league venue in a day and raise money for the Pink Pong/Cancer Research UK campaign.

The group included experienced and inexperienced cyclists, with rising local table tennis star Stan Shilton being the youngest rider at just 11 years old!

Ninty arduous miles were ahead of the team and, as a result, the early pace was steady so as not to run out of steam too early.

The team included Tony Clarkson, Julian Elsbury, Tom Lewis and Ian Magg of Thornbury Table Tennis Club.

Before the first scheduled cake and drink stop at Portishead TTC 30 miles in, the team fixed labels marking the event to the entrances of Almondsbury, Westbury, Filton, Filton Academy, AVSPOL, Bristol Civil Service, University of Bristol and Failand Table Tennis clubs. And at Failand, they were joined by another willing rider. This first section was not without incident, as the team lost 90 minutes through various mechanical problems including two inner tube blow outs. However, they managed to maintain high spirits and rolled up at Portishead for a well-earned ‘pit stop’.

Suitably re-fuelled and after double checking the running repairs on the bikes, they set off looking to make up lost time on the next 16 miles before our lunch stop. During this section, they visited clubs that were furthest west comprising Cleeve and Claverham (Walton), Yatton, Cleeve & Claverham (Cleeve) and Nailsea.

Nailsea TTC was the halfway point and they were once again met by the smiling faces and encouragement of our fantastic catering crew comprising family and friends who then proceeded to load the team with much needed carbs and fluids.

By now, they were still an hour or so down on the intended schedule so before too long the starting nine were sat back in the saddle and travelling to South Bristol to take in HCC, Knowle and Brislington and Bristol followed by a journey in an eastern direction which took them to Frys and Frys–Longwell.

The miles started to tick down as they encountered a few more testing hills when riding north-west to call in on St George, Old Georgians and Southmead where they had a final pit stop.

They made a move to tick off the remaining three venues which were at Page, Winterbourne and Fromeside before they had one final steep hill to ascent before enjoying the resulting mile or so downhill to the finishing line and the open arms of The Anchor Inn, Thornbury.

All that took part should be truly proud of their efforts but special mention must go out to Tom Lewis, Daniel Ives and Stan Shilton who probably had a total of 90 miles worth of cycling experience between them prior to the event.

And, the event raised £870 over the weekend for Cancer Research.