Hi – I’m Jess and I’m one of the co-chairs of Trustees here at St Augustine’s.
I am writing this blog sitting on a train on my way back from Suffolk where I have just finished my part of the All Together 24 Challenge. If I look a little bit tired that’s because my event involved riding my bike all night from London to the beach at Dunwich! More on that later…. but first a little bit about why I was doing it.
Running St Augustine’s takes a huge amount of hard work, cooperation and….cash! Our amazing range of activities and services means so much to our Centre Members. But they cost a lot of money. While we get much of our funding from the council and other organisations – we do need to raise a big proportion ourselves.
So, this year, we are working individually, but also as one big team, on the All Together 24 Challenge.
The idea behind the challenge is that each person pledges a number of miles (walking, running, cycling, rowing etc) and also tries to get people to pledge donations. We’re aiming, by the end of the year 2024, to raise £24,000 by covering 24, 907 miles (the circumference of the earth).
So, back to my bit of the challenge. I decided to do my bit by taking part in the Dunwich Dynamo. Read more about the Dynamo here: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx82y43d52go
It’s a huge ride, involving thousands of people, that happens every July on the Saturday nearest to the full moon. Some people say it’s like going to a festival but with bikes!
The Dunwich Dynamo is 112 miles long. So I reckoned, with my training included, I could probably pledge 400 miles to the All Together 24 Challenge. And I promised myself that I would raise at least £400 – a pound for every mile.
All very well in theory – but first I had to face up to the reality!
One of the biggest challenges was transporting me, and my heavily laden bike, from Hebden Bridge to Kings Cross and then finding my way across London feeling very apprehensive.
As soon as I reached the start at London Fields, my nerves began to disappear. My mum and dad were there to wave me off (and to relieve me of some of my more excessive luggage!) and my old friend Fiona and her partner Ray joined me for the ride.
We set off at 7.15 pm. It’s a long – and slightly scary – ride out of London, with lots of car drivers a bit bemused by all the bikes on the road. But once we were out of town, and the sun began to set, the endless string of twinkling red lights in the distance made the whole thing quite magical.
I’m not going to lie – there were times in times when I found myself questioning why I was doing such a crazy thing. A low point was just before the sun came up, when we’d been riding in the dark for about four hours, and all I wanted to do was curl up by the side of the road and sleep.
But the thing that really kept me going (as well as a massive bag of TangFastics and handfuls of peanuts) was a steady stream of encouraging messages from our wonderful Centre Members.
They told me how much the centre means to them; how St Augustine’s has become their home and how it feels like family, how the centre gives them a voice when they feel vulnerable and how they were standing with me – in solidarity – while I was doing my challenge.
One Centre Member wished me luck on my ‘journey of love’ and those words stuck with me the whole night and it was easy to keep on pedalling with a big smile on my face.
Fiona, Ray and I finally rolled into Dunwich at around 8 am to find the entire beach covered in bikes and sleeping people. We jumped straight into the sea and then gobbled down a breakfast of fish and chips.
I’ve just looked at my JustGiving page and I’m thrilled to see that I have raised nearly £900. I may be a bit tired and slightly stiff, but I am so glad I got involved in the All Together 24 Challenge.
We’ve got till the end of the year to hit our target. So why don’t you join us? You can start collecting donations for any sort of activity. Just get in touch with Les (les@staugustinescentre.org.uk) and she will tell you how to set up a fundraising page or link to the main one.
Or if you can’t join in – maybe you could sponsor one of our team who hasn’t yet completed their challenge. Check out the list of fundraisers on the main St Augustine's JustGiving page to sponsor a challenger.
And if anyone fancies doing the Dunwich Dynamo next year – just give me a shout!!!