People of a certain age – myself included – are always going to have a place in their heart for the Raleigh Chopper, but no matter how much you might love these iconic 70s bikes, they were never made for long-distance cycling. Pulling wheelies and jumping off planks – yes, bring it on, and stick a card in the spokes while you’re at it, for Evel Knievel sound effects. But expeditions…no.
However, no one, it seems, told Tim Bright about this. As Cycling Weekly previously reported, in April this year Bright, who has chronic myeloid leukaemia, set off on a mission: to ride a Raleigh Chopper around the coastline of Britain, raising money for cancer charities.
When I spoke to him in May, Bright had ridden from Norfolk to Wales, via the lovely but horrendously hilly South West counties of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. He’d already had two frame failures, and despite a natural optimism to suit his name, in all honesty, I rather wondered whether he’d really make it all the way. I mean a Raleigh Chopper… right the way around the country. It’s nuts.
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Well, shame on me, because tomorrow Bright will roll into Cromer in Norfolk to be met by the mayor and a town crier, and hopefully a load of well-wishers, because he’s only gone and done it, and he deserves a big fanfare.
Bright reaches the border
(Image credit: Tim Bright)
“It’s been the most mind-blowing experience of my entire life,” Bright tells me as he nears the end of his epic ride. “I did hit a bit of a wall in Wales,” he admits. “I just felt so ill with the chemo, and I wasn’t sure the bike was going to make it.”
But he banished the ‘Doom Monster’, as he calls the voice that whispers negative thoughts into his mind, and just kept going. “The frame has snapped in eight different places in total,” he reveals. “But people have fixed it for free every time, the support has just been amazing. And every time it’s fixed, the weld is stronger than the metal around it.”
Bright too, seems to bounce back from severe adversity with remarkable resilience. “Doing this ride has changed how I live with my leukaemia, he tells me. “It’s changed not only my physical but my mental condition as well.”
He was hospitalised with gastroenteritis in Dumfries, and had to take a week off to build his strength back. But then he was back on the road, in that unbelievably uncomfortable looking riding position.
“It’s actually sorted my back right out,” he tells me, ever ready with a positive take. “I’ve always suffered from a bad back, but now it seems to be fine.”
Bright has been supported all the way around by his wife Sue
(Image credit: Tim Bright)
Bright did have to cut out the Highlands section of his planned route, after being told that more frame breaks were inevitable and that he wouldn’t be able to get it fixed in the far north, so he re-routed along the Forth and Clyde Canal.
However, as of 10am tomorrow, he will have ridden 2003 miles on a Raleigh Chopper. Which is extraordinary – and may even constitute the furthest distance ever cycled on a Chopper. And he has brought in over £11,000 for charity through his fund-raising page Giving Cancer the Chop…per, which remains open.
If you’re near Cromer tomorrow, go and see Bright in The Shoreline café/bar (which is donating £1 for every coffee sold while he is there to the cause) and give him a slap on the back – but make it a gentle one… he had to ride around the whole country on a kids’ bike to sort that out.
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