|
What is the RRTT?
The Ride Round The Top is a 10 day, 1800 mile ride from Oxfordshire along the spine of England up into Scotland, then to the furthest north at John o’Groats, before returning via the north and west coasts of Bonnie Scotland, starting on 27th June 2008.
Why the RRTT ? - the Gutjwa Appeal
The Gutjwa Appeal raises funds to support a South African ‘township’ school. Project work to improve the dire conditions there is being undertaken by a team of supporters including friend Lorraine Hird, the hard-riding lady-member of Two Kiwi Bikers, who’ve covered 50+ countries and over 160,000 miles / 260,000kms in the past decade on their pair of bikes (see www.gutjwa-appeal.org).
The Riders
University-days in the late-1960s saw now Norton Owners Club (NOC) Vice President Peter Scatchard and fellow NOCcer Neil start a long-time friendship.
Since the early 1970s until his recent retirement Neil worked in Finance for many of the best-known names in the UK auto-industry, including Ford, Rover, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin.
Ex-bike-journalist / features writer / road-tester Peter went on to work in Marketing with auto-chemicals companies Hermetite and Solvol, before de-camping to the wonderful wacky world of IT.
The Motorcycles
Neil’s riding his 1960 model 350cc single-cylinder Wideline Model 50 Norton, first registered in 1961, and acquired by him in 1968, then shortly afterwards converted to ES2 500cc single with an ex-RAC side-car hauling engine. Neil’s managed to hang onto his boyhood bike through all these years, restoring it in 2008.
Peter restored his 1959 Norton Dominator 99, a 600cc twin-cylinder machine, in 2006, 40 years after first acquiring it in 1966. Over the years of its initial use during university and early-married life, the machine was substantially modified, and the rebuild has continued this theme.
The Ride
From Oxfordshire, Peter links up with Neil in Shirley, Birmingham and the two of them then head north through Derbyshire for Norton Day at Sherburn-in-Elmet near York. They then continue north through the Yorkshire Dales and over the Durham Moors into Scotland, skirting Edinburgh to Alloa.
The route to the far north is then alongside Loch Lomond, across Rannoch Moor and down Glencoe to the Great Glen for Loch Ness, the Cromary Firth and thence the east coast up to John o’Groats. There’s then a brief run west to Durness, before starting back south via Ullapool, Skye, Mull, the Kintyre Peninsula and Arran, then across Ayr, Dumfries and Galloway and into England for the western Pennines back home.
Fund Raising – how to pledge your support for the RRTT and the Gutjwa Appeal
Please help us help the children, staff, supporters and community of Gutjwa School, South Africa.
You can pledge you support, and make payment by cash, cheque or credit / debit card by clicking here.
The promise is that EVERY PENNY / CENT etc gets to Gutjwa School, NO fees, NO kick-backs, NO overheads – ALL the money raised is taken personally to Gutjwa and spent DIRECTLY on the school and its pupils.
|
