By
Yekaterina Jourtcheva, KPMG,
Bike Ride Participant
| Dear friends and colleagues! The Downside Up Charity Bike Ride that we have written and talked about so much over recent months has finally happened and I would like to thank all of my colleagues and friends for moral and material assistance and support. DSU managed to raise $ 49,000 from this year's event. Thanks to your assistance, over 200 children will have the opportunity to study at Downside Up in the 2001-2002 academic year. |
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This year 43 cyclists from Great Britain, France, Switzerland, and the Russian cities of Moscow and Voronezh took part in the bike ride, including 11 children. The youngest participant was only six years old! The bike ride included both professional and amateur cyclists. Some participants cycled all the way, while others alternated actual cycling with carrying their bikes on buses. However, most importantly everybody enjoyed the bike ride! Over three days I made so many new friends and came away with unforgettable impressions! |
| After meeting up at the Hotel Ukraine on 24 August at 7pm, we took the bus to Mozhaysk. We would be starting the bike ride in this vicinity. | |
| At 9am on Saturday morning, we were transported to Borodino, where after taking a quick look at the Borodino battlefield, we started off for Zvenigorod. We took five-minute water-stops every 15 km and had already covered 45 km by lunchtime! At a birch grove on the bank of the Moscow River, delicious shashlik awaited us. It was carefully prepared by Victor, a regular participant on these bike rides. A two-hour break and we were off again! After the shashlik, the kilometres became harder to cover. However, virtually everybody managed to ride another 50 km. The main thing was not to lose touch with the leading pack, in whose slipstream one could ride: all you had to do was to turn your pedals at the set pace. |  |
| We were very lucky with the weather - it was warm and sunny. However, the strong cross-winds also created specific difficulties for the cyclists. What wonderful nature you can find near Zvenigorod. Unfortunately, my photographs fail to do justice to the beauty of these places!
In Zvenigorod, we visited the Savva-Storozhevsky monastery, which was built in the 14th century and is still going strong today. |
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| After this tour, we booked into the Svyazist rest home for the night. It turns out that a mere 70 km from Moscow, you can find the Soviet service that many of us had forgotten! After supper and a folk concert, everybody went out onto the square for shashlik, where sitting around a fire, we sang the songs of the Bremen musicians, Nikolsky, Visotsky, Tsoi, the Beatles and Frank Sinatra. The hardiest stayed up until 4 in the morning! At 9 am, we had already started off for Krasnogorsk! The 65-kilometre ride on Sunday was the hardest: it looked as if the climbs would never end. However, eventually we reached the long-awaited finish. We all made our way to the buses and headed for Krasnogorsk. |
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There, at the Zenith hotel on the banks of Moscow River, after a short break, an awards ceremony was held for the most outstanding participants. Awards were issued to "Fastest cyclist", "Cyclist with the best appetite"," Sleepyhead", "Mister Entertainment" and, finally, "Mister & Miss Red Square Bike Ride 2001", awarded to regular participants, eight-year old Florence and her father Charles. |
| The most thrilling part of the bike ride happened on Monday, when we made our way from the Novodevechy Convent along the Moscow embankment, captivated by the feeling of being part of one united team, different people with the same goals. We cycled seeing all the traffic stopped, drivers tooting their horns... We finished our ride on Red Square, in front of St. Basil's Cathedral, where we were greeted by our friends and relatives, children who attend the Downside Up Children's Centre, and their parents.
All cyclists were awarded "Red Square 2001" Certificates of Achievement. |
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| After the finish, many participants went to the Early Intervention Centre of Downside Up and met the teachers and families of the children. Caroline Mills, the Head of the Centre, told everybody about the current work, DSU programmes for the children and their parents. | |
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| At about 2 p.m. the foreign participants were taken by bus to the airport, while the others went back home, arranging to meet at 7 p.m. in the American Bar & Grill to celebrate the end of this charity event. When we parted that night, we promised each other that we would meet up next year at the 7th Downside Up Charity Bike Ride! You are very welcome to join us next year! You will enjoy it! |
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We
are very grateful
to the following companies
and organisations for their generous support:
E-mail: downsideup@downsideup.org
and of Russian Charitable Fund no. 67698