With our London Director, Gareth Atkinson and North Director, James Bruce set to start their challenging Knight Frank Cycle to MIPIM in just one week’s time, we caught up with Gareth as he completes his training. Building on his experience from 2019, Gareth has been getting busy and packing the miles in!

With over 1250 miles completed in 2022 already, Gareth has been getting up at 5am to commute 25 miles to and from our London studio, twice a week. He has also been taking his new responsibilities as Ride Captain seriously and leading out Club Peloton training rides at the weekends across Kent and Surrey. This even included helping lead 15 riders 150km across Kent in the aftermath of Storm Eunice.

He commented, “I’m not going to lie, training in the winter can be pretty gruesome. You never quite know what conditions you are going to get, there have been some strong winds and of course the cold and dark don’t help. It is however all part of the experience of preparing for the ride to MIPIM and good mental and physical exercise so those taking part understand the conditions they might face, particularly for what we are likely to expect in Northern France. Perhaps one of the most challenging training rides so far has been the one after the recent storm, the fallen trees across some of the lanes definitely added extra complexity to the ride.”

With less than a week to go, attention now turns to the task of packing kit, some decent carb loading and continuing the fundraising in aid of the incredible charities that the ride supports. These include recruiting families for children to find adoptive homes and assisting families with post-adoption support via Coram Adoption, awarding bikes, tandems and adapted trikes to children and young people affected by cancer via Cyclists Fighting Cancer; tackling the root causes of violent street crime via the Top Ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust and assisting the children of families living with a loved one with MSA via the Multiple System Atrophy Trust.

A big thanks once again to Newforma, Careys, Bluebeam, Town Centre Securities, Plan A, CGL, Social, Cubic Interactive and Symetri, our amazing sponsors who have got behind Gareth and James on their cycle. It’s not too late to support the Civic Engineers team fundraising efforts, visit https://www.justgiving.com/team/civicengineers