Battle of Britain 75th Anniversary

Several months ago we were very excited to be approach by the RAF Benevolent Fund to join the selection process to help them run an amazing cycling event. The idea was to cycle on Brompton Bicycle’s from Paris to London in 4 days, we loved the idea from the start.

We pulled together all our team and ideas and set to work to build our pitch.   We are really please and extremely proud to announce Ride25 have been selected to run the RAF Benevolent Fund Battle of Britain 75th Anniversary Brompton Bicycle Challenge 2015.  It’s going to be just epic…

All the riders will be on a Brompton bike, the hire of a Brompton bike is included in the ticket price (thanks to our kind friends at Brompton).   Brompton Bicycles and Brompton Bicycle Hire have been amazing to work with and have even designed a special limited edition Brompton Bicycle just for the event which is available to buy if you take part.  We also recently visited the Brompton factory to finalise the design of the bikes and will do another blog post just about how amazing it is to have hand made bikes built to order inside the M25 in central London – just amazing and brilliant.  Brompton is a British engineering icon similar in magnitude to that of the Spitfire in World War II, which is why they have been chosen as the bike for the once in a lifetime event.

If you are unfamiliar with the Brompton have a look here…

But they aren’t just for commuting, we have had riders cycle all over the world on these amazing machines on Ride25 cycling tours – several of the Brompton management team took part in our Paris to Geneva leg a couple of years ago.  I can assure you they were not at the back of the peloton.  Brompton even have their own World Championships – I think we might need a Ride25 team for this next year!

This will be a fantastic experience for all involved and will offer you the chance to cycle between two of the world’s greatest cities taking in significant Battle of Britain landmarks along the way.

All the riders will be able to navigate using the bespoke personalised SplashMaps which actually take their inspiration from the slike maps of World War II and the Battle of Britain.  During World War II the RAF pilots carried escape and evasion maps plotted on fabric (normally silk).  These maps could be used without a rustle or crackling. They could also be hidden inside cloth uniforms, such as in a seam or inside a collar, that wouldn’t betray their existence during a frisking or inspection. The silk maps could also be used to patch clothes, filter water, make a sling for an injured arm or to make a bandage. They could even also be used to blow your nose!  These are a very traditional, appropriate and useful addition to the Ride25 adventure for the Battle of Britain Brompton Challenge.  We’d like to say thanks to the guys at Splash Maps who have been great to work with on this project.  Check out their amazing maps HERE.

An example of a World War II silk map:

Image from wikipedia.org

Fancy joining in this great adventure and raising money for an amazing cause?  You can find out more and sing up HERE