12 March - Day 12 -“The storm starts, when the drops start dropping When the drops stop dropping then the storm starts stopping.” Dr Seuss

The sun is now shining and my clothes, socks and shoes are drying on every available radiator in the Centre. The lesson from today is to never believe the weather forecast or never to set yourself a very daft challenge for the year. Checking this morning, the forecast said light rain, sunny intervals and a fresh breeze, not torrential rain for the whole journey, interrupted not by sunny intervals but by hail stones and sleet! I do promise to stop talking about the weather soon in these blogs but I suppose it does happen to be a very appropriate metaphor that the sun only comes out once you’ve stepped inside St Wilfrid’s Centre.

This is the first morning, climbing to Owlerbar that half way up the hill, I really felt I needed to stop for a rest but knowing that Mike had sponsored today and knowing what fantastic support he has provided the Centre with over the years, I continued pedalling.

I arrived at the Centre (in a bit of a soggy mess) to find out that after 12 days, 345 miles (only 7.6% of the total… really?), we’ve already received an amazing £1462 in sponsorship. This will now pay for 7310 mugs of tea or 146 emergency food parcels or enable us to run the allotment for 97 weeks or 19 pottery classes for 5 clients at a time, which is enough to inspire anyone to cycle another 4155 miles….or anyone daft enough to believe the weather forecast.

So, as I approach the weekend and a full week of sponsorship next week, I can safely say that, apart from the first three words, this John Ruskin quotation is (unusually for him) not one that inspires me.

‘Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.’