Coffee, cake and campervans galore help Banbury club cyclist raise funds for alpine challenge

Rich Ivins serves coffee and cake to raise cash to meet his target for an epic alpine cycle ride

It was coffee, cake and campervans galore as Club CamperKing member Rich Ivins aimed to raise the final few pounds he needed ahead of a huge cycling challenge this week.

By hosting a coffee and cake morning at CamperKing HQ for 40 fellow cyclists from the Banbury Star Cycle Club, Mr Ivins managed to gather in a further £300 to help him close in on the £3,700 target he has set for his Trans Alp Cycle Challenge - a gruelling 519km ride in the French Alps.

Mr Ivins is currently in Europe preparing to take part in the challenge which will see him ascend almost 1.5 times the height of Mount Everest over the course of the ride. The epic ride begins tomorrow (Wednesday) and is due to end on Sunday, September 11.

During last Saturday’s coffee morning, he and his wife Ruth and daughter Amber helped serve dozens of teas, coffees and slices of cake to the hungry riders, who were each asked to donate at least £5 to Rich's cause.

Rich Ivins will cycle a gruelling 519km ride across the alps this week

To ensure he's ready for the challenge, Vodafone employee Mr Ivins has been training for months to get in shape at the same time as raising funds for Vodafone's Your Planet Foundation. This supports two charities, The Tusk Trust and The Ocean Cleanup.

The Ocean Cleanup is a Netherlands based charity is working to rid the world's oceans of plastic. The Tusk Trust is a UK based charity with a vision for a future in which people and wildlife can both thrive across Africa. It was founded at the height of the last poaching crisis in Africa when 100,000 elephants were being slaughtered every year for their ivory tusks.

Mr Ivins said: "The epic challenge is to cycle from Grenoble France and traverse the Western Alps south across, France, culminating on the Cote d’Azur in Nice with a distance of 519km covering some of the most iconic climbs from the Tour De France including the famous Alp D'Huez, with a total ascent of 12,354 metres."

CamperKing has supported Mr Ivins from the start of his challenge, offering him a weekend's campervan hire as a raffle prize earlier this year.

You can contribute to his epic cycle challenge using the following JustGiving web link: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/rich-ivins