Land’s End to John O'Groats in 24hrs

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Details of Norman's ride can be found below, but to date (Nov 2007), the venture has raised in excess of £7500 for the Niemann-Pick Disease Group (UK). A fantastic effort on Norman & Kait's part. If you would like to add to the Group's fund raising for Christmas, why not buy a few Chrismas Cards. Annie's card is illustrated below but there are also two other designs available. If you would like to buy some, please contact Toni Mathieson (the Group's National Development Manager). Her details can be found on the Contact page.

Nieman-Oick Disease Group (UK) 2007 Christmas Card

...And What Happened on the Ride?

Norman set off from Lands End on his classic 1970’s Triumph Trophy motorcycle at 9:00 on Wednesday 4th April 2007. The Triumph had done about 750 miles after its engine rebuild and had been running well. Unfortunately, it developed an engine problem near Bodmin and Norman was forced to resort to his back-up Suzuki to continue. Despite this setback, he and his companions reached John O'Groats before 9:00am on 5th April and so succeeded in the journey, if not on the intended transport!

A huge thank you to all who have sponsored Norman and his fellow riders. If you haven't sponsored him already, you can still download a form from the ‘Sponsors’ page.

and the reason for the ride is Annie

In July 2005, Norman and Kait Pyne’s daughter Annie, who was then 9 years old, was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, a rare but devastating, degenerative, genetic disease.

At that time and in the months since, the family have received a lot of help and support from the NPD group. Their role, as an organisation, is to provide a support structure for sufferers and their families. They provide nursing care and raise funds for research into the disease itself and act as a source of information on the condition.

To give something back and to help boost the Niemann-Pick Disease Group’s funds, Norman proposed a sponsored ride on a classic fundraising route from the botton to the top of the UK mainland on a classic British bike.

Norman says “I’ve often thought about doing the end to end ride on my Classic Triumph Trophy and have decided to do this at Easter 2007 to raise money for the group. I'll try to make the ride in just 24hrs. This shouldn’t be too difficult, plenty of people have done this trip before but it will require good preparation, care and stamina. (Also some fairly good map-reading because I don't think ‘satnav’ would be in the spirit of the ride!). The distance of the trip will be about 860 miles.”

“The bike is a 1971 Triumph Trophy (a single carb Bonnie) which I first bought in 1979 having just passed my test. At the moment the engine needs a complete rebuild after major engine failure (see right) and I’ll post updates on the progress on the web site.”

Many people have helped in the rebuilding of the bike and particular thanks need to go to Stuart Motorcycles, Boyer Brandsden www.boyerbransden.com, Oliver Barnes of Tri-supply www.trisupply.co.uk and Andy Gregory of Tri-Cor / Rare Spares www.tri-corengland.com.