My #Festive500 - By Ruth Jones (age 7¾)

On the first day,  I started the Festive 500 with my Daddy.  I felt excited and determined to do 500 kilometres in 8 days. We went on roads that I knew and roads I had never been on before. We started with a Holcot-Hannington loop (which looks like a dog’s head on Strava). We went to Sywell, Holcot, Hannington, Orlingbury and back to Wellingborough, my hometown. It was tough, because the roads were flooded, but we did it. We used our yellow tandem to do most of this challenge.

It was very cold for most of the week and Mummy lent me some extra gloves to wear on the tandem. We went out twice a day. At one point during our challenge, we were out in -1° weather, we stopped in Orlingbury to take a picture and some friendly people waved to us from their house. I waved back. We met them in the end and we took a picture with them and their ponies, too. Also, we rode to Oundle with one of my Twitter friends, and we judged the Christmas lights in the villages on our way home. We stopped to have some chocolate in a bus shelter!

On the last day, we went to a cafe in Orlingbury called Wythmails and they gave me a delicious hot chocolate with extra cream, flakes and marshmallows. I was grateful for their kindness.

When we finished, there was frost on the handlebar bag and our bottles were frozen. When we were at the top of the Embankment, we finished the #Festive500. Daddy was extremely proud of me. I was proud of my achievement. For my next challenge, when we are allowed to, I would like to ride to visit my friends in Denmark on my own bike.