Why are we cycling to the Rugby World Cup 2011?

The History: The inaugural world cup of 1987 saw the hosts New Zealand sweep aside the  French to become the first world champions. 5 further tournaments have seen the honours shared between Australia (1991 / 1999), South Africa (1995 / 2007) and England (2003).

The Future: The Rugby World Cup 2011 brings to us the 7th world gathering of international sides and promises to be another fantastic spectacle. With scattered successes from the peripheral sides in the Pacific islands, and the emergence of Argentina as a serious challenger in 2007, we have seen the continued development of rugby as a worldwide sport. Will the next powerhouses emerge from Austria, Iran or even Vietnam? Well we are off to find out!

The Mission:  Our aim is to cycle self-sufficiently from Twickenham Stadium, the home of English Rugby to Auckland, New Zealand in time for the Rugby World Cup! The journey will take us through 25 countries, covering 25,000km and a few stretches of water (no we wont be attempting to pedalo across those bits…).

It all started in the summer of 2009, when we both read “The Crossing” by Ben Fogle and James Cracknell and decided that we needed a real ‘life changing’ kind of challenge. As it happened, we had been planning to move to Melbourne to go back to college and try something new, but now we realised that this was the time to do something we had only ever dreamed about doing before and the idea of cycling to Melbourne was born. Once we had decided upon a long bike ride, Tom couldn’t resist the temptation of turning this into a pilgrimage on gigantic rugby levels! We want to make this a rugby journey never experienced before.

But we didn’t just want to do this for us. This is the craziest and most exciting adventure we are ever likely to have, which is why we want to raise as much money as possible for our two chosen charities. In the UK, we are supporting Rays of Sunshine, a charity which turns wishes into happy memories for children with serious and life threatening illnesses as well as providing equipment and medical assistance to the children and their families. Our second charity, Shining Light NGO carry out valuable work to assist communities in poverty stricten North Pakistan.