Annual Charity Cycle Ride

The Oxford-Cambridge bike ride is an annual fundraising tradition here at Pembroke. A group of students, led by James Gardom, cycle the 85 mile route to raise funds for a chosen charity. In today's blog James Gardom writes about this year's ride.

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Every year I like to do a full day cycle ride with students, to raise money for charity. We opted for June, after the exams, and for the Oxford to Cambridge Cycle ride this year. Once again we were raising money for CARA.

The Oxford to Cambridge route is very beautiful, 85 miles, through a whole series of small villages. If you lay a ruler on the map between the two cities, the route more or less follows that. Some reasonably steep hills in the first couple of hours, with a total of 4000 ft of uphill overall. 

It was a small and capable group of cyclists this year which made the day much more relaxing for me as group leader. It rained hard in Oxford soon after we left, and we were pursued by the edge of the rain most of the way to Cambridge – but when we arrived the sun came out.

We raised almost £1000 for CARA, which helps to rescue Academics from danger. CARA began its work rescuing Jewish academics from Germany in the run up to the Second World War. Its focus more recently has been rescuing academics from Syria.



Photo credit: Antonia Kielkowska