LOCAL man Stewart Renfrew has successfully completed his 700@70in7 challenge, and a challenge it most certainly was!
To coincide with his 70th birthday, Stewart along with two friends, set themselves the challenge to cycle 700 miles through France in 7 days to raise £70,000 for three charities close to his heart; CLIC Sargent, the Down’s Syndrome Association and the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation.
The threesome finished the cycling challenge ahead of schedule, arriving in Narbonne Plage on 3rd July and so far have raised over £7,000.
Stewart said, “We set off from St Malo at mid-day on Sunday 26th June and cycled through beautiful French countryside to La Guerche-de-Bretagne, where we enjoyed a great reception in the public bar of our night’s accommodation. Celine, the barmaid, assisted in collecting donations for Jérôme Lejeune Foundation. There I beat a young Frenchman in an arm-wrestling contest, after which he had his friends taking photographs by which to remember the occasion.
“The next day, we cycled to Royan and the following morning we took the ferry across the estuary to Pointe-de-Graves, from where we cycled to Plya-sur-Mer to a campsite where a huge sand dune separated us from the Atlantic.
“The next morning, my birthday, we set off at 7 am, stopping a couple of hours later for breakfast, on our way to Casteljaloux where the owner of our chalet for the night arranged a birthday cake for me.
“On 1st July we cycled, to Castelnau d’Estretefonds. From there, we continued, on 2nd July, along the canal for a while, until the canal-side paths ceased to be paved, at which point our planned route took us by quiet, extremely smoothly-paved main roads to Carcassonne. With a following wind, we cruised the last 50 Km or so at around 26 to 28 mph, and I even managed to hold between 30 mph, and up to 32.8 mph, for almost two miles.
“For Sunday, 3rd July, I had again chosen quiet back roads for our route to Narbonne Plage, on the Mediterranean coast. Some of these roads turned out to be glorious, well-paved rural roads with very little traffic, though vineyards and other crops, though others did not deserve to be called roads, though they were marked as such on the map. At one stage, this had slowed us so badly, we were beginning to fear that we would not finish on time but, in the event, we arrived half an hour early after several re-routes onto better roads. On arrival at Narbonne Plage we had covered 707 miles on our bikes in slightly less than 7 days.
“We had a great ride and all greatly enjoyed the experience, though preparing for it and doing it has cost each of us a great deal of effort, time and expense, in the hope of raising a very substantial sum in charity donations.
“Between us all, we have so far raised over £7,000 for CLIC Sargent, Down’s Syndrome Association and the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation. That reads well as, ‘£7,000for700@70in7’ but it is well short of the target which I had set out to raise for these charities. Any further donations received to these very worthy causes would be very much appreciated – £10 each might get me to the target!
“All of the charities for whom we raised funds on the 700@70in7 provide support for children diagnosed with conditions which threaten their lives or the quality of their lives.
