Ride and Stride - it’s time to start planning sponsored walk

Now is the time to start recruiting walking companions - be they family, friends, schoolfriends, dogs or horses - and to start planning a route and ask for sponsors if you want to take part in the annual Ride & Stride.
Now is the time to seek sponsorship for the Ride & Stride eventNow is the time to seek sponsorship for the Ride & Stride event
Now is the time to seek sponsorship for the Ride & Stride event

The challenge is to visit as many churches as you can in one day - from 10am to 6pm on Saturday September 12 - whether by bike, on horseback or on foot.

Participants can choose to be sponsored for the number of churches visited or just for taking part. You can even be be sponsored for sitting in a church and welcoming visitors.

Many churches offer refreshments for visitors on the day and some also lay on other events such as bell ringing demonstrations.

This is a national event and last year’s riders and striders in the Aylesbury Deanery area raised almost £6,000, and Claydon Deanery (which covers parishes from Addington to Winslow, Waddesdon, North Marston and Marsh Gibbon) saw an almost 50% increase over the previous year in money raised.

Half the proceeds raised locally go to the Buckinghamshire Historic Churches Trust to help maintain historic churches and chapels in the county, and the other half goes to the church or chapel nominated bythe sponsored rider or strider.

Last year Nina Newton from Dunton used an unusual mode of transport when she took part on an outdoor elliptical bicycle. Jack Peeters from Oving has previously cycled to 40 churches.

Other participants have walked to the church in the next village and back or visited a handful in a short walk - there are four churches in Haddenham for example.

For sponsorship forms and details go to: www.bucks-historic-churches.org/ride-stride