Onto FCA heartland.

Hi there blog fans. Good morning to you all or good evening to the real devotee’s out there in the blogosphere (not sure if this is a real word or if there is such a thing). We woke at the crack of dawn ready for an epic days riding from Cardiff to Bromsgrove. Joining us for our outing was John Eburn from Favourites Finance, handy as I had been meaning to ask him how my pension was doing. With hollow eyes he responded; “keep working sunshine; you need to be working for as many years as we are going to do in miles today”. Blimey I knew the retirement age was going up but that’s ridiculous.

7.30am we were on the road, racing our way through Newport's industrial heartland. The A48 took us through Monmouthshire and onto our first stop at Chepstow. We sat watching the tidal surge of the Severn estuary. The morning heat intensified and we reminisced about the early days of the tour de France where they smoked cigarettes to expand their lungs and drank Brandy for hydration and energy. Rob our support driver had the radio in the car going, it was radio Bristol and the tones of our regional manager Richard Brandford and Val Davis, one of our foster carers started booming out over the air waves. Richard and Val were talking about the qualities needed to become a foster carer, good stuff. We headed off for our next destination, our Maisemore office in Gloucester. As we crossed back into England we stopped for our usual border crossing photo. A little old lady popped her head over the bridge where we stopped and wanted to know what we were doing. I started to explain about fostering fortnight and the for our children organisation. With Richards interview words ringing in my ears ‘any one can foster’. I seized my moment and asked her if she wanted to Foster? She told me she was 79 and already had 10 great grandchildren and that kept her busy, ‘perfect’ I told her bags of experience. ‘I’ll think about it’ she said, blast, missed my first LEJOG Foster carer recruitment opportunity.

We pushed our way up to Maisemore alongside the river Severn and reached the office for a bunting welcome in the sweltering mid-day heat. Carers and staff gave us cake and drink to get us through the next section of our journey towards the Malvern’s and on up to Bromsgrove. The views were awesome, Malvern’s one side, Cotswolds the other and the Black mountains of Wales in the distance, stunning.
Tired and weary legs saw us leave the Malvern’s and move through Worcesterand onto Bromsgrove
Vital Statistics:
96 miles
15.6 MPH Average
15 Maisemore cakes
John Eburn's bike: 10lbs
Chris and Morris's bikes 100lbs...each.



Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Rob our support driver today. Well done Rob and thanks for all your help.