2 Countries, 2 Offices and a pregnant Gooding-clone

I awoke in my own bed this morning, but something didn’t feel quite the same. Gradually the strands of consciousness drew themselves together and assembled into a kind of self, but not my usual self, a different one. It dawned on me that this was not to be a normal day, it was another Cycle Challenge day. This was not my normal self, this was me in transition, journeying the length of the country. My legs ached (in fact pretty much everything ached). Somewhere deep inside my body asked “what are you doing to me?”

At the FCA Bristol Office preparations were underway for the Bristol Cycle Challenge Event. Two exercise bikes appeared in the front car park for volunteers to take turns in cycling through the day and a raffle to raise money for the For Our Children organisation. Without warning, suddenly we were surrounded by clones of ourselves. The place had become “Planet of the Benjamins & Goodings”. It was scary.

 “I want to go home” Morris whimpered. “This is home” I replied, “but the sooner we get out of here the better”.

Amongst the hoards we caught a glimpse of a pregnant Gooding-clone. It was worse than we had thought …… they’d already started to breed!

We decided the safest course of action was to stay cool and go along with things for now, waiting for a chance to escape. So we were very relieved to escape into the traffic of Whiteladies Road. Some of the clones spilt out of the office car park and stumbled along the pavement, but fortunately fell by the wayside as we got into our stride.


Before long we found ourselves in familiar countryside and soon reached the mighty Severn Bridge.

Crossing over into Wales we headed South, posing as a couple of lost LEJOGers, making steady progress towards Cardiff. In Newport we suffered our first pneumatic disaster – Morris had 2 punctures within a few miles (I think it was the same puncture come back for another go).

However, we made it through to the Cardiff Office alright in the end for a warm reception from Michelle, Steve and the girls.

But, horror of horrors, some clones had made it over here first.














Statistics for the Day:
Distance covered = 49 miles
Max speed = 39 mph
Average speed = 13.7 mph (that's when we're moving. stopped periods not included)
Punctures = 2
Welshcakes eaten = 12 (probably)
Mr Benjamins & Mr Goodings = 200
Pregnant Gooding-clones = 1

Tip of the Day (to the student who approached staff at the Bristol Office asking for a toaster): it's iwanttofoster.com, not iwantatoaster.com