10:36am Friday 13th November 2009
By Harry Hogger
FUNDRAISER Rod Drew cycled around Dorset’s boundary inside 24 hours with two replacement hips.
He took on the 230-mile challenge to raise funds for a new exhibition space at the Dorchester Arts Centre.
Rod, 64, from Dorchester, started and finished at the Jubilee Clock on Weymouth seafront in an achievement made all the more remarkable by the fact that he had hip replacement surgery around seven years ago.
He went anti-clockwise round the county, first heading east past Poole and Bournemouth then around the top of the county and back along the coast from Axminster.
He said: “The reason I was doing it was to raise money for the exhibition space and the fact that I’m Dorset born and I love being here. It was great to kind of embrace the whole of the county.”
Rod said he found the western side of the county much more difficult than the east because it was much less flat.
Nevertheless, he easily completed his principle aim to pass the 200-mile mark within 24 hours as he clocked up the distance in less than 19 hours.
He finished the entire 230-mile route in 23 hours and 58 minutes. Rod had his hips ‘resurfaced’ in 2002 but said that he was still able to complete the challenge.
He said: “The weather was great, it was mild all night till about 5am when it just started to get quite cold.
“It was a beautiful clear night with a full moon and there was hardly any traffic.”
Rod said that, although the challenge took quite a lot out of him at the time, he felt ‘as right as rain’ just a day after completing it and was planning to get straight back on his bike.
He said he was unsure as yet exactly how much sponsorship he had received to help Dorchester Arts Centre’s bid to raise £5,000 for the exhibition space.
To make a donation to Rod’s appeal drop into the arts centre at The Grove from 10am to 4pm on weekdays or go to dorchesterarts.org.uk
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