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Preston to Carlisle – 93 miles
Thursday 11 June 2009
The Be Number 1 LEJOG cycling team arrived safely in Carlisle this evening after a journey through some of the most beautiful scenery in Britain. And they also passed the psychologically important halfway mark en route from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
But the highlight of the day for Hugo Ambrose lay 93 miles to the south. More precisely in Preston, where the Yngling Olympic gold medal-winning triumvirate of Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson had earlier captured the hearts and minds of hundreds of schoolchildren for the fourth time in as many days.
Following their highly successful workshops at schools in Okehampton, Bristol and Shrewsbury on the journey north from Cornwall, the Three Blondes in a Boat gave a presentation to 300 or so children at St Gerards RC Primary School in Preston this morning. And Ambrose admitted that "feeling a bit of wear and tear in the legs after five days in the saddle” paled into insignificance when compared to the reaction that the Yngling girls received at St Gerards.
“It was a humbling experience for all of us,” said Ambrose, the founder of Be Number 1 and the driving force behind the LEJOG project. “The children were absolutely inspirational, not only because they were obviously excited to hear what the girls had to say, but also because they knew their subject. Not only did they know about the Yngling and what the girls had accomplished, but they were also fully aware of the Olympics and what you can achieve if you have a dream.
“You could see that the children were really thinking about things, whether it was health and diet issues, which they obviously knew a bit about, or just touching Olympic gold medals before passing them on to their fellow pupils.
“As a team, we are trying to raise as much money as we can for the British Heart Foundation through our Be Number 1 LEJOG project, but it is also immensely rewarding to see so much excitement and happiness on the faces of young people. It is not every morning that three Olympics gold medallists walk into your school and we hope that the children had a morning that they will remember for the rest of their lives. They asked some fantastic questions and they gave us a brilliant send-off when we left for Carlisle.
“We are also delighted that Pippa [Wilson] has decided to stay with us all the way to John O’Groats, despite the fact that she had to withdraw from the cycling part of the event on Tuesday after suffering a leg injury. It would have been understandable if she had decided to go home to Lymington to recuperate, but she has seen the effect that our school workshops have been having and she couldn’t resist doing some more. It is actually difficult to tell who feels more rewarded by the presentations – the girls or the pupils! And what could be better than that? We all feel greatly enriched.”
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