Day Seven - Ripon to Leeds

This morning crossed communications (or some kind of chinese whispers) meant that we lost Mohammad (our rider who had come especially from Palestine for the ride). The cyclists had to head off without him from Ripon centre to make sure we weren't late getting to Leeds. The van driver and a worn-out cyclist waited around for him. A whole half a worried hour later he turned up safely. He had only gone off to phone his family! Phew.

Sheridan's tyre blew up with a resounding crack only 10 minutes into the ride, luckily she was ok and once the van reached her she borrowed the worn-out cyclist's bike (said worn-out cyclist was keeping the van driver company for the day) and raced off to reach the other cyclists who all sang, 'Who shot the Sheridan?' when she caught up with them. She took it well.


We rode over 40 miles up an down very hilly countryside with our youngest rider as lead rider and our eldest as tail. A picnic lunch provided by the Menwith Hill peace activists was very gladly eaten up when we arrived. Menwith Hill is a huge US surveillance base and essential to their missile defence (or Star Wars) strategy and military agenda. Helen John and Sylvia Boyes were being filmed by a tv news crew in

anticipation of their court case next week for challenging rights to protest there so the crew filmed us with them too.



We then handed in one of our leaflets to the base and each one of us was also filmed and photographed by some of the base personnel.



Many hills later some us thought we were hallucinating from over exertion when we saw a zebra in a field but as we cycled on we released he was a captive of a circus nearby. Another hill or two and we arrived in Leeds to a great curry at the Friends Meeting House, a warm welcome from a local councillor and a film showing all organised thanks to Yorkshire CND.