Long distance scooter rider, Rick Westwood will be setting off from Squires Cafe at Sherburn on 16th June at 5am to try and ride 1000 miles in less than 24 hours… on a standard Vespa T5.
Last summer we covered the story of Rick’s first Iron Butt Royal British Legion charity attempt. You can read about that valiant attempt here.
1032 miles non-stop
Other than fuelling up, Rick covered 1032 miles during his attempt, non-stop but sadly didn’t manage it in the allotted 24 hours. He arrived at the final checkpoint in 26 and a half hours, that’s a pretty long time to be sat on a scooter, especially when riding through the dead of night in the Scottish highlands. Straight after the 2017 attempt, Rick wasn’t to be defeated and vowed to be back this year… Back raising more money for the Royal British Legion.
Weight saving
Like any adventurer, he’s got the bit between his teeth and his plan of attack this year is to shed some weight from the scooter. Last year he carried all his own spares in a huge plastic container strapped to the back rack, 30kg of excess baggage. Whilst on the challenge in 2017 Rick ended up riding with a biker, Shane from Cornwall. The two ended up as mates afterwards and Shane (who incidentally rode up to Sherburn for the Iron Butt, did the 1000 miles then rode back to Cornwall) will be accompanying Rick this year and carrying the heavy spares for him.
Help Rich raise money for the Royal British
Rick is raising money for The Royal British Legion whilst doing the Iron Butt challenge. It’s the longest established ex-service charity and also one of the very few charities where all the money goes to where it belongs.
Let’s show Rick that SLUK readers are behind him by putting a few pounds into his Just Giving page, you can read his story and donate by clicking this link.
Rick also hopes to have a tracker fitted to allow you to keep track of his progress, he’ll list details of that on his Facebook page here.
New products always in development…
