The Official Page for the 15th A

Wow – what a fantastic day! A beautiful sunny day and hundreds of happy cyclists! We were hoping for 600 riders but the final figure was 752 ! That’s 200 more than last year’s record number and there has been loads of positive feedback. The 2008 Burgess Hill Bike Ride took place on Sunday 8^th June and returned to our regular start and finish point at Oakmeeds Community College in the town centre. A new feature of the ride was the choice of 10 mile, 24 mile or 40 mile routes – all starting and finishing in the town centre. It seems that everyone loved the routes and we’ve had loads of compliments on the signs and marshals.

This year we doubled the number of staff on the registration desks and it really paid off, with pre-entered riders hardly queuing at all. The members of Round Table, Lions Club, 41 Club, St. Peter & St. James Hospice staff and friends gave up their valuable time to spend Saturday putting up direction arrows and warning signs and then on Sunday came back to marshal or help out at registration and the checkpoints. No one anticipated this number of cyclists but everyone coped amazingly well.

Last year the ride raised £19,000 in total. If the pledges that we received at this year’s ride come through, then we could be looking at a fantastic total of at least £23,000 !

Round Table and Lions Club rely on events such as this to raise money for local charitable causes and any sponsorship that you can raise will be much appreciated. Most sponsorship raised using this form will be eligible for gift aid which enables us to claim additional funds from the tax man but in order for us to claim, the donors must give their name, HOME address and post code – and tick the gift aid box. If you have not already done so, please download or print a sponsorship form using the button on the left and ask your sponsors to fill it in before sending in your money.

The individual and team raising the most sponsorship will receive a prize (as well as the Bike Ride Trophy) at the presentation in the autumn.

The bike ride committee would like to thank all our supporters – please use the Supporters button on the left to see how many local organisations helped us put on this event.

But most of all we want to thank all the cyclists who entered the ride. Thank you for your support and we hope to see you again in 2009!

Burgess Hill Bike Ride, PO Box 65, Hassocks, BN6 0BH