{"id":165655,"date":"2025-09-28T09:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T09:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/165655\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T09:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T09:30:09","slug":"oxfordshire-man-completes-cycle-challenge-on-30-year-old-old-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/165655\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxfordshire man completes cycle challenge on 30-year-old old bike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethan Gudge, South of England<\/p>\n

\"SueSue Ryder<\/p>\n

Glenn Dearlove rode from London to Brighton on his grandmother’s old bicycle<\/p>\n

An amateur cyclist, who rode his grandmother’s old bicycle from London to Brighton, has said he finished the ride with “heavy legs but a full heart”.<\/p>\n

Glenn Dearlove, from Cholsey in Oxfordshire, completed the 55-mile ride on the 30-year-old gearless step-through bike, complete with a basket on the front.<\/p>\n

He took on the challenge to raise money for the charity Sue Ryder, which provided support to his grandmother Joan and the family during her final days.<\/p>\n

The ride itself had been “good fun, challenging and quite an emotional ride as much as it was a physical ride”, Mr Dearlove told the BBC.<\/p>\n

As a keen cyclist, he said the London to Brighton ride had always “been on my to-do” list but it was “a slightly different challenge doing it on Nanny Joan’s bike”.<\/p>\n

He said the bike, which Joan was “known for”, had been a gift from her grandchildren for her 65th birthday, adding that it “worked quite well to do something for charity on it”.<\/p>\n

“She rode it pretty much every day around the village, originally she used to do the football pools and deliver Avon on the bike,” Mr Dearlove said.<\/p>\n

\"SueSue Ryder<\/p>\n

The bike had been a gift to his grandmother on her 65th birthday<\/p>\n

He continued: “My usual bikes are racers, so they’re designed for going a little bit faster, but equally they don’t have a basket on the front.”<\/p>\n

He said that during the ride, Joan had been “at the forefront of my mind”.<\/p>\n

“There were a couple of difficult hills and a couple of tough sections but certainly on those bits she was on my shoulder.<\/p>\n

“I finished with heavy legs but a full heart.”<\/p>\n

Mr Dearlove’s efforts have so far raised more than \u00a31,700 for the palliative and bereavement support charity Sue Ryder.<\/p>\n

“It was really important because Nan was able to stay in the family home she had lived in for more than 65 years thanks to Sue Ryder,” he explained.<\/p>\n

“They turned up to the house and we were all a little bit lost and didn’t know what we were doing, and we couldn’t have done those last couple of days without their help and guidance – they were fantastic.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ethan Gudge, South of England Sue Ryder Glenn Dearlove rode from London to Brighton on his grandmother’s old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-165655","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\/165655","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=165655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}