{"id":101108,"date":"2025-08-29T15:38:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/101108\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T15:38:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:38:06","slug":"penny-farthing-cyclist-from-oxfordshire-preparing-for-charity-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/101108\/","title":{"rendered":"Penny farthing cyclist from Oxfordshire preparing for charity ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

A penny farthing cyclist is preparing to ride 50 miles (80km) to raise funds for a charity that supports vulnerable young people.<\/p>\n

Richie Mason, from Wantage, in Oxfordshire, is taking part in the annual ride for the Jon Egging Trust (JET) on 13 September 2025.<\/p>\n

The trust was founded by the widow of a former Red Arrows pilot who lost his life during the Bournemouth Air Festival in 2011.<\/p>\n

Whilst most will be taking part in the JETRide on standard road bikes, Mr Mason will instead be riding his modern version of the Victorian bicycle – which has a front wheel that is far larger than the one at the back and no gears.<\/p>\n

Mr Mason said he bought his penny farthing last November and has found that it is great to ride and a “really good workout”.<\/p>\n

“My wife was quite surprised that I hadn’t been sneaking bits into the house when I eventually said ‘I’d like to buy one of these please,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

JETRide<\/a> has around 1,800 ft (550m) of ascent and starts and ends at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire – with spaces still available for people to enter this year’s edition.<\/p>\n

Mr Mason said riding penny farthings up hill was challenging: “You just have to grind it out really.<\/p>\n

“There’s no gears, so the power that you put through the pedals is directly contacted to the front wheel, so you get the torque going left and right with every pedal,” he explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A penny farthing cyclist is preparing to ride 50 miles (80km) to raise funds for a charity that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-101108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}