We now have the results for the 2017 Ride and Stride. The weather was appalling, with really heavy storms throughout the day and yet the total raised is a little over £20,000 including GiftAid. This compares to about £22,500 in 2015. What a fantastic result and congratulations to all who took part, whether riding, walking, church sitting or organising.
All our churches were open which is yet again a remarkable achievement particularly for churches like Stoke Dry which received only four visitors.
About 130 people participated actively which is 5 down on 2015 but the same as 2013. We know everybody is getting more claims on their time and purses so we think that is a great result.
41 churches actively raised money compared to 42 in 2015 but they were not the same ones!. 7 churches dropped out and 7 came in. What is evident is that one person in a village can make a big difference. Greetham was re-energised by Sylvia Bland, who set up a team (Mud Sweat and Gears), raised lots of money and got great publicity in the Rutland Times. Belton like-wise was re-energised by Dr Ed Bates. Thank you and well done to both!
Our website and social media campaign was more active this year. The new Facebook page (Ride and Stride Rutland) had 57 ‘likes’ and many more visitors.
The electronic paper document distribution process introduced for the first time this year was generally a success and saved a lot of wasted paper. The number of participants was not affected so we will continue with that in 2019.
The most notable achievement was of course the trio, Ben Findlay, Geoff Beetham and Ryan Henry who cycled around to every church in Rutland. They started an hour early at 9 a.m. and finished, despite foul conditions, at 5.30pm.
Equally notable was a solo ride by Jamie Bennett of Tickencote who achieved his personal goal of 60 churches in the official time period of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. John Williams of Morcott continued as ever to defy his age and walked to 14 churches.
The prize giving will be held in February 2018.
