On Sunday 31st March, 30 members of Côr Meibion Caldicot Cycle Club and four Guests from Newport Social Cycling Club spent 8 hours riding round and around Redwick to try and complete as many laps of the ‘Redwick 2 mile circuit’ as they were able.  780 laps were completed in all – a total of about 1600 miles.  All this was in aid of the Choir’s nominated charities; ‘Sparkle’ and to try to raise enough money to buy local toddler Annalese Gosling a new, purpose built bed.   Each cyclist paid £10 to take part and the sale of refreshments ensured that £460 was raised on the day.  With sponsorship, it is hope that the event will raise over £1000.

 

A fabulous, fun filled day was had by all in spite of the blustery conditions and the Cycling Club is proud that it has achieved so much by this event.  The Cycle Club was formed four years ago by a number of choristers who were interested in cycling and they got together to encourage social cycling in the choir and locally and soon began to organise events to raise money for charity.  In its first year it organised events which raised £3500 to help the choir’s  own efforts to raise money for charity, in its second it raised £6500 for the Victims of Chernobyl Children’s Trust.  Last year it raised £7000 of the £8000 raised for Prostate Cymru.  It now has over 30 members who regularly take part in rides to places of interest (including local hostelries) around South Wales and the West of England.

 

This year the target is £10,000 for Sparkle, a Newport based charity based at the Serennu Centre in High Cross.  This charity helps young people with severe disabilities or learning difficulties by providing facilities for them and their families, treatment, hydrotherapy, cinema facilities and counselling.  It relies entirely on charitable donations and receives no government funding. Part of the money raised (about £4500) will be used to buy a new purpose made bed for Annalese Gosling, a Caldicot 5 year old who suffers from the extremely rare progressive, crippling disease Fibrodisplasia Ossifans Progressiva (FOP) by which any injury to her body restores itself as bone not tissue, so she is slowly becoming encased in a second skeleton which cannot be removed by surgery.  There is no known cure.

 

The Cycle Club is very much an integral part of Caldicot Male Voice Choir and along with the choir’s Birdie Boys Golfers and its social evenings at the Choir Hall provides another outlet for choir members and their families to enjoy themselves as part of a wonderful organisation.  It’s next big event is The Source of the Severn ride where 16 cyclists will ride from the source of the Severn to Caldicot over 3 days – a distance of 210 miles.  They hope to be joined at Tewkesbury on the third day by another 30 or so to ride the last 60 miles back to Caldicot.  If you’d like to join them for the third day on July 11th, please e-mail through this web site.  Cost is only £10 for transport and the expectation that you would raise at least £50 for our two charities.

 

The Choir and Cycle club would like to thank Hire One, Reliance Water Controls, Pro-Steel Engineering, Jaga Brothers transport and Barclays Bank for their invaluable support to help us achieve our targets for these two very deserving causes.