People keep asking, What charity are you doing it for? Even Shane said, We should do it for charity. The other thing people say is, You should apply for a grant. Even Shane said, We could do some writing, make it a project.
All I wanted to do was ride from my back door to a friend’s house and for it to be a little longer than usual. Longer than the teenage ride I used to make from my parents’ house to my girlfriend’s, nine flat miles of Cheshire, longer than the hilly Dales circuits I do these days which, strangely, average about nine miles too.
So if you feel that our less than epic journey is a missed opportunity for charitable giving, we are not stopping you making a contribution to a charity of your choice, or one of those we give to: Medecins sans Frontieres, Action Aid, the NSPCC. As for arts funding, the sad thing is that I know the language that could translate this friends’ escapade into a project that stood a good chance of getting some.
But the most important thing about Le Jaunt is that, apart from a nod to Le Tour, it is about nothing other than itself. It is not even about this site or blog, which is just our way of sending you postcards.
Le Jaunt is very close now, and is slightly more epic. While deciding not to comodify our adventure, we have still taken last week’s speech by culture secretary Maria Miller seriously, and decided we can’t justify pissing around enjoying ourselves away from our cultural enterprises for more than two days. So it is Le Wharfedale Petit Depart Tuesday, Hull’s Champs Élysées Wednesday and Snaith inbetween.