Many thanks to those who were active in and contributed to my FC Auction towards our Truants Mexico Ride, raising over £15,000 in funds for our 3 Charities (Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy, Teenage Cancer Trust and Childline) and taking the total so far on this ride to over £420,000 towards our target of £500,000.

If any fans out there would like to add a little to this it would be much appreciated and can easily be done online at www.justgiving.com/Rod-Smallwood-Mexico.

And so to the ride… as you can see it was pretty tough this time…

After close to 10 hours crammed into the back of Virgin Atlantic, a long immigration wait and a bumpy 3 hour transfer we finally made it to Izmal for a few hours kip before we sorted out our bikes and 44 Truants and 8 Rookies then  hit the road for the first leg of the fifth Truants Bike Ride, my first as a Pensioner having hit 65 this year!! (the oldest riding Truant is 74, so a ways to go yet!!)

By the end of the first morning leg of 40km six of our intrepid team had been ordered onto the support vehicles by the Doc suffering from heat exhaustion. We had all been watching the weather forecasts for a week and it was grim – rain, storms and more rain. However it turned out to be sun, extreme heat and more heat with temperatures ranging up to 90 degrees making it the hardest ride we have yet done. The heat is almost bearable when you are cycling as you get a bit of a breeze, but when you stop the faintness comes on. Taking on water regularly becomes an issue of survival. Over the 3 days we covered close to 200km – slightly less than planned as one off road section had been washed away the week before by the heavy rains. We were not disappointed by this!! The camaraderie was immense and all survived in the end though 3 were a bit cut up from bad falls. All in a day’s work!!

If you are interested in more detail about this kindly go to www.thetruantsuk.com and click on Bike Rides.

We will continue our fundraising until January and we will then let you know when the full website for the Mexico Ride is complete, this will have by then the movie of the ride, the full tall tales, more pics and details of the final total you helped us to raise.

Again thank you for your support.

Best regards.

Rod Smallwood