58-year-old West Ham Season ticket holder Chris Ward has cycled to Mount Everest and in North Korea but next week he’s trying a real adventure – he’s cycling 500km from West Ham to Newcastle for the start of the new Premier League football season, to raise funds for the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research – but to make it a bit different, he’s riding it like it’s 1993! (the year Bobby died and his fund was set up) – without his mobile phone.
He will be following canal towpaths the whole way, as without a mobile he’ll be relying on paper maps, have no messaging, no pre-booked accommodation, no knowing where any accommodation actually is, no internet, no emergency call, no weather forecast, nothing to while away the time with at coffee stops! It does mean though he will be asking lots of people for directions: “Do you know the way to St James Park?”
Chris has supported West Ham since he met Bobby Moore when he was seven and he was giving away Esso World Cup coins at a petrol garage. He died at 51 and since then mortality rates for bowel cancer have fallen by more than 30% but the disease still kills 45 people in the UK every single day.
You can help by sponsoring his ride via www.chrisward.cc or www.justgiving.com/ChrisWard1993
Chris will be taking a Walkman and a Kodak camera to take photos of everyone who helps him get to the match on time
You can contact Chris at chris@chrisward.cc
I had a Mk 11 Chopper bike, best Christmas present ever, cost £38, good old littlewoods catalog. How times have changed.
Good luck with your fund raising Chris, a very worthwhile cause indeed.