Advice needed re sponsored ride

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Helenabbey

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A friend, her daughter and I (all from the north east)are thinking of planning our own sponsored ride. Our YO and his wife did a sponsored carriage drive (coast to coast) and raised a lot of money for our local hospice. Our YO's wife now has advanced ovarian cancer and we would like to raise money for cancer research, she is keen to help us do this.

Any suggestions as to possible routes? At the moment we are thinking of another coast to coast or possibly the Pennine bridleway. We will be using 3 horses and hope to do at least 20 miles per day. We are going to ride the Newtondale horse trail in May and do a few other sponsored rides before the big one, which is planned for August ish.

Any suggestions, routes, advice or is there anyone who would like to join us?
 
I have walked coast to coast. It took two weeks averaging about 15 miles a day but the vast majority of paths that we were on wouldn't be suitable for horses. Presumably if your friend has driven across it then they know where the paths are but I would plan it carefully in advance

Try looking at http://www.sherpavan.com/ for more info. Its a walking forum but you would be able to talk to lots of experts on the route and it gives details of all the B and Bs on the route.

I would really love to join you but my mare doesn't travel well. Good luck and let us know how you get on
 
A different suggestion - how about running a sponsored ride for others? I appreciate that part of your plan is to do something useful and challenging yourselves, but the alternative might be better for the fund-raising.

I run sponsored rides in the south and get up to 150 entries. Generally, they are all paying about £10 to enter and few collect sponsorship, but that's £1500 to charity - not bad - and if you get everyone to sign a 'waiver', the tax man adds about 20% to that total as it is a charitable gift.

What you need is a friendly venue (estate, farms, forestry, private moorland) prepared to let you use their ground - access and parking are the critical issues - and preferably some land most of which is not normally accessible to the public - and then create some routes of 5, 10 and 15 miles.

Good fun, good fundraiser etc.
 
I can see what you mean, we have looked into it. The problem is that there isn't much demand in our area. I have only managed to find 1 pleasure ride in the area and that is run by the Endurance Society of GB. We are in a particular spot where the hacking isnt great in parts quite dangerous. We can rely on ourselves to raise money but I don't want to disappoint YO's wife with a bad turnout. She is really keen on helping us do it, we are all friends of hers and she came with me to choose my horse, she gave me my pony who my friends daughter will be riding, so she is really keen on us 3 doing it.
 
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