Funds raised: £60,000
Number of riders: 186
Many felt that this was the best ever and certainly the Ride had more riders (186) and raised more money than ever before. It was a hot year especially the day from Paris to Rouen. There was one case of sun stroke though bizarrely it was a rider from Zimbabwe. Over 1,000 people welcomed us back at the official finishing point, The Lifeboat Inn where we had superb few hours to round off a great event.
This was year when Pedro's Peddlers cycled up from Bilbao in Spain to join the main Ride. There was concern that the directionally challenged group leader Pete Alloway would turn right instead of left out of Bilbao so on his departure from Hayling, he was given a map of Portugal as well as France!
It was also the year that Simon Toft from Portsmouth paper, The News, came along to report the Ride. Until the last day things had gone remarkably smoothly with few incidents to report so Simon decided to become 'the incident', badly damaging his wrist in a crash.