OOH LA LA! OCON TEAM PEDALS TO £17K CHARITY TRIUMPH
Setting off from Blackheath Common with a group of more than 100 cyclists, the eight men and their bikes battled wind and rain to cycle more than 300 miles to Paris. They cycled around the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysées to reach their final destination - the Eiffel Tower - sealing their personal achievement and the £17,000 that had been pledged in donations.
Ocon’s newly appointed development director, Rob Greaves, was joined on the trip by Darren Shadbolt, Paul Tomlinson, Paul Cunningham, Simon Green, Simon Edge, Liam Muir and Steve Jerams, many of whom had never attempted such a trip before and had needed to invest in a new bike for the challenge! Despite the varying abilities and the inevitable aching muscles, however, the whole team enjoyed the adventure, spurred on by daily text messages about new donations being pledged.
Comments Rob Greaves: “It was definitely hard work with a lot of early starts and some pretty unpleasant weather conditions but it was also a great team-building exercise and we got to travel through some wonderfully scenic places. Over 100 cyclists arriving at once pretty much stopped the traffic at the Arc de Triomphe, and the sense of achievement at arriving at the Eiffel Tower is matched only by our delight at raising such a substantial amount of money. We’d like to thank all the clients, delivery partners and suppliers that helped us raise such a fantastic sum.”
The Ocon team raised the money for the Opal Foundation, a charity established by its parent company, Opal, to help various projects in the UK and Africa. The £17,000 raised by the London to Paris trip will be donated to the £35,000 AMREF project to provide clean water and sanitation in the Kechene slum, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is one of a number of charity initiatives that Ocon has been involved with this year, which include a three peaks challenge and a dragon boat race.
