{"id":364265,"date":"2025-12-23T18:15:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/364265\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T18:15:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:15:16","slug":"i-went-over-the-handlebars-and-landed-upside-down-penny-farthing-cyclist-rides-101-miles-dressed-as-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/364265\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I went over the handlebars and landed upside down’ \u2013 penny-farthing cyclist rides 101 miles dressed as Santa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cImagine trying to cycle up a hill in your hardest cog, with a rucksack full of bricks,\u201d says Charlie Burrell, describing the sensation of riding a fixed-wheel penny-farthing<\/a>. \u201cIt sort of feels like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If anyone would know, it\u2019s the 40-year-old. On Sunday, the shortest day of the year, Burrell rode his penny-farthing for 101 miles<\/a> dressed in a Santa costume and wellington boots. He began at Brighton Pier at 8:30am, and hoped to return by sunset around 4pm. Instead, his loop of Sussex\u2019s bridleways led him on a gruelling 12-hour slog, compounded by rain, potholes, darkness, and a spectacular over-the-handlebars crash.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As Burrell speaks to Cycling Weekly two days on, he\u2019s sitting in bed recovering. How did he find the ride? \u201cIf you\u2019d asked me that after I finished, I probably wouldn\u2019t have replied to your question,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut today I can say it was a good experience.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI look like an old man when I\u2019m walking. Even sitting on my bed, my backside hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n

A driving instructor by trade, Burrell grew up a keen racing cyclist. The penny-farthing he used on Sunday is his own, purchased from a man in East Sussex for just short of \u00a32,000. He previously rode it from London to Brighton \u2013 around 75 miles \u2013 \u201cand that was painful,\u201d he says. His latest challenge, he decided, would be his toughest to date.<\/p>\n

The idea came as a charity fundraiser. So far, Burrell has raised \u00a31,900 for two organisations: People Against Parental Alienation and Finley\u2019s Touch, a local children\u2019s cancer charity. Writing on his GoFundMe page<\/a>, Burrell explained the ride would be a way of honouring the children, \u201cthe real fighters\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven on my toughest mile, it will never come close to the battles thousands of innocent children face daily,\u201d he wrote. It didn\u2019t take long before those tough miles arrived in his winter solstice ride.<\/p>\n

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Plotting the route, Burrell decided to avoid busy roads, opting instead for car-free country tracks and repurposed railway lines. \u201cI thought it would just be nice gravel pathways,\u201d he says, \u201cbut, for some of it, I was off-roading.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Charlie\n<\/p>\n

The gravel tracks were peaceful, but made for treacherous penny-farthing riding (Image credit: Charlie Burrell)<\/p>\n

Around 30 miles in, Burrell ended up in a heap on the floor. The moment came when he was crossing the Downs Link, trying to pass a fallen tree by mounting the grass verge. \u201cI slowed right down, and I didn\u2019t make my mind up in time whether I was going to get off the bike or cycle around,\u201d he says. \u201cI went over the handlebars, and ended up landing on the floor upside down, hitting the ground quite hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily there were no kids around to see Santa crash,\u201d he adds with a laugh. \u201cI wasn\u2019t hurt, but my penny-farthing ended up upside down. I\u2019d put two bottle cages on the front the night before, and because of that crash, one of them broke off.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It was around this point, too, that Burrell\u2019s legs started tiring. \u201cThey felt like they were burning, on fire,\u201d he says. \u201cI got to the halfway point and I thought, \u2018My computer must be broken. Surely I\u2019ve done 80 miles, not 50.\u2019 At that point, I was doubting myself. I was thinking, \u2018I\u2019ve bitten off more than I can chew. Maybe I can walk the rest of it and push it, as long as I can get it done before midnight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Night fell at 4pm, and Burrell was soon plunged into \u201cpitch black\u201d, with more than four hours still to ride. The lack of vision forced him to slow down. So, too, did the rain. \u201cMy Santa costume filled up with water. It was so much heavier,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that added to how hard it actually was. It was just an extra layer of dead weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrell continued to ride through the discomfort. The distance ticked by. Then came the 80-mile mark, and the attrition of a day on a Victorian-style penny-farthing, particularly the saddle soreness, became unbearable. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a bony, skinny bum,” Burrell says, \u201c[but the last 20 miles] were really painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

What kept him motivated to carry on? \u201cIt was just the charities that I\u2019m doing this for,\u201d the 40-year-old says. There was one person in particular he kept thinking about: his friend\u2019s son, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was a year old. \u201cHe fought it, it went away, which was good, and then this year [now aged three], it\u2019s recently come back,\u201d Burrell says. \u201cHe\u2019s currently in hospital, fighting it for a second time, going through all the chemo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Charlie\n<\/p>\n

Burrell’s costume became heavy with rain water (Image credit: Charlie Burrell)<\/p>\n

Twelve hours after he set out, Burrell returned to Brighton Pier in his rain-drenched Santa suit. He looked down at his bike computer<\/a> unit to end the ride, \u201cbut it said I\u2019d done 98 miles,\u201d he recalls. \u201cSo I thought, \u2018I can\u2019t stop now\u2019, and I rode up and down Madeira Drive, along the seafront, until it hit 101\u2026 I said I was going to cycle over 100 miles, so I had to go to 101.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrell pulls up his Strava<\/a> file to rattle off the stats. Stoppages aside, he spent more than nine and a half hours in the saddle, for an average speed of 10.5 miles per hour. He also climbed more than 4,400 feet of elevation (1,300m), on tracks he chose because he thought they would be flat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI underestimated the route, the daylight, how hard it would be,\u201d he says frankly. \u201cBut at least I finished in one piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrell set out to raise \u201cliterally a couple of hundred quid\u201d, and is now nearing in on \u00a32,000. Donations can be made via his GoFundMe page<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cImagine trying to cycle up a hill in your hardest cog, with a rucksack full of bricks,\u201d says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-364265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}