High Wheelers gear up support as Rotary coffee morning raises £500

Henley’s High Wheelers Matt Richardson and Bill Pollard were the guests of honour at the Rotary’s first coffee morning last Saturday at the Christ Church Centre which raised £500 for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Matt and Bill spoke to guests about their forthcoming ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats and riding their penny farthings.  After thanking everyone for coming and supporting the charity through the raffle, Matt gave a demonstration on how to mount a penny farthing!

Rotarian Jane Bertelli who organised the event said, “I’ve been a Rotarian for about 4 years now and this is our first coffee morning. Macmillan is a charity that’s very close to me. I always support any event. They supported me when my Dad was poorly. So, I do feel that they deserve some payback. I think they’re a fantastic charity. They help so many people. Matt and Bill came to do a Rotarian talk at Leander. I’ve sold my old children’s penny farthing to Bill which I used to ride when I was a child.  I’m so pleased to have raised £500.  It’s fantastic amount from a coffee morning. I’m so glad so many people came here because I was bit worried people wouldn’t come.”

Matt said, “We are clearly honoured, literally honoured. We’re very grateful because the Rotarians have chosen Macmillan Cancer Support as their charity for today. And as hopefully anyone that has seen us riding around knows, that is our charity of choice. We’ve been raising funds for them since 2024, including our Henley to Paris ride. We raised £24,000 on the Henley to Paris ride, and we’ve raised about £700 for the Land’s End to John O’Groats and we’re hoping to raise £50,000 for this one.

The duo are planning on setting off on their Land’s End to John O’Groats ride on 25 April.  Bill said, “We think it will take us between 2 and 3 weeks.  We’ve got to do an average of about 70-80 miles a day, which is a lot, and we’re not getting any younger, so we’re going to have to pace ourselves and we’re going to have to make sure that we don’t overdo it so we can still do it the next day and the next day and the next day. So that’s going to be the tricky bit. We won’t be going for any speed records.  We will though probably set the outfit record on this one.  I think there will be a least a dozen with some new ones especially.”