Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

'Big Green' bike ride supports local school libraries

From Simon Key at the Big Green Bookshop:

It all started during our appeal in March. We had been totally overwhelmed by the wonderful and generous people who wanted to keep the bookshop going, and by the incredible things that people offered to do to help.

One morning a customer came in and told us that her husband, let's call him Azeem, was doing a cycle ride in July and wanted to donate any money that he made in sponsorship to the Bookshop. This was one of those *gulp* moments for me. One of those *hold it together Simon, don't blub again* moments. I held it together and after saying thank you thank you thank you, said that the least I could do was do the cycle ride with him too. I like a bike ride, me.

She told me that the ride was known as the Dunwich Dynamo and that Azeem had done it last year and loved it. She then gave me a few more bits of information.

It's an overnight ride It's unsupported (there was no organisation as such)

Oh, and it's 120 miles.

OK. 120 miles. That's like cycling from London to Bristol. Or like Portsmouth to Coventry. That's quite a long way isn't it?

We're going to be raising money for six local Schools. The budgets for Schools have been cut somewhat recently (some may even go as far as to say they have been slashed), and as such there is less for them to spend on books. We like books and we like kids being able to read books, so any money raised will go towards buying books for the School libraries. It might not be much, but we all hope that whatever we raise helps a little bit.

I'M CYCLING 120 MILES!! IN THE DARK!!

The six Schools are Primary Schools that have supported us or that we know don't have a huge budget for books, and so we hope they will benefit from this. It is very difficult choosing Schools as there are so many that we'd like to help, but it seemed to make sense to choose six.

The six schools are;