Rugby in England

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Rugby Friends

A visit to Saracens RFC and discussing our journey with Steve Borthwick
John Owens - President of RFU waved us goodbye from Twickenham Stadium on 1st May 2010

World in Union Scroll - Profile

Steve Borthwick - Ex England Captain & British Lion	Michael Owen - Ex Welsh Captain & British Lion
Moses Rauluni - Fiji/ Pacific Islands Captain	Jacques Burger - Namibian Captain
Cobus Visagie - Ex South Africa player	Chris Wyles - USA player

Country Blog

Our "World in Union" scroll got off to a flying start when we were kindly received down at Saracens Rugby Club. England captain and rugby icon, Steve Borthwick, officially started the project in motion by turning our blank canvas into a piece of world cup history. Our meeting with Steve and his co-player Michael Owen (Wales and the British Lions) was a fantastic experience and provided us with further inspiration to set our sights high for our ride.

We also managed to get further Nations (USA, Namibia, South Africa, Fiji) represented on the scroll and now can't wait to get on the road to build the "World in Union" campaign.

We'd like to say a big thank you to all the guys down at Saracens and you now have 2 more fans wishing you the best of luck with the close of the Premiership season.

On a sunny morning outside Twickenham Stadium, a few of our friends gathered to watch John Owen, the president of the RFU, wave us off from under the golden lion gate.

Conditions were perfect, and we made our way in good time across South London to our first stop, Footscray Rugby Club in New Eltham. Here, the chairman, Barry Lewis, presented us with a Footscray rugby shirt to take to their nakesake club in Footscray, Melbourne.

Guys, we will do our very best to ensure it gets there, we will not guarantee its cleanliness.

After arriving and departing from Footscray Rugby Club pretty much on schedule we headed off towards Dover. Less than 1 mile down the road, we were met by another good friend, who took no time at all to detour us for a tea stop with free bacon and egg sandwiches!! Thanks Terry and Elaine :-)

Sufficiently fed and watered, we pedalled on into the early evening managing to park up in Rainham, Kent for our first "night" in the open. We smuggled our tent and gear into a disused field and setup camp and feasted on cheap pate and bread. However, having no experience with this type of camping, we discovered a few flaws to our location selections.

Lesson 1 - don't camp next to a street lamp,

Lesson 2 - don't camp on noisy twigs and rabbit holes.

Lesson 3 - tie down your tent properly so you don't wake up everytime a flap of tent moves in the wind.

They say that 6 hours sleep a night is enough for anyone. By next Thursday we will have had a total of 6 hours sleep unless our survival techniques improve :-)

Day 1 - distance pedalled 93km, cash spent - £3.69, hours sleep - negligible.

Sunday morning we decided to arise from the rabbit holes and snappy twigs at 4:30am.

In pretty much relentless rain we pedalled on the final 65km to Dover. We were determined to test our bike maintenance skills here in the UK, so I (Tom) duly cycled directly over a nice big rusty nail. We then set a personal best at changing a tyre, definitely under 1 hour, I promise....

So here we are, sitting in our accomodation awaiting tomorrow's ferry, cold, damp, gagging to get into our room to make coffee for free, and smelling a little like wet dogs.

Day 2 - 65km before 11am, cash spent £0.00 (yet), Rusty Nails in the tyre = 1.

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