Pedal Power for Mercy Ships

THREE students from Bath have marked the end of their A Levels by getting on their bikes and pedaling from France to Gibraltar in aid of Mercy Ships.

Jake Tempo, Alex Wildy and Chazz Fisher from Ralph Allen School have swapped exam stress and revision for a 2,000-mile charity ride from St Malo in Brittany to the famous Rock - a journey that will take roughly six weeks. The three friends are using the marathon journey to raise £6,000 for Mercy Ships.

Jake, who’s 17 and from Warminster Road in Bathampton, is planning a career in medicine and hopes to spend part of his gap year helping out on a Mercy Ship.

Seventeen-year-old Alex, from Sham Castle Lane, said: “We’ve managed to get sponsorship from Activities Abroad, an activity holiday company, who’ve given us T-shirts and a fun place to stay midway through the trip. We hope to get in some white water rafting.

”Chazz, who’s 18 and from Widcombe Hill, plans to study robotics after his gap year. He said: “It’ll be great to spend the summer doing something active after all that revision.

”Two young women have joined the lads for the first leg of the trip from St Malo to Bordeaux. Clare Deal, 18, from Winsley who finished her A Levels at St Augustine’s College in Trowbridge, is preparing for a gap year trip to Vanuatu in the South Pacific where she’ll be a volunteer teacher at a primary school.

Her companion on the French section of the cycling trip is twenty-year-old Clare Fox from Combe Down, a former Monkton Combe student who’s studying equine science at the University of the West of England.

If you’d like to sponsor Jake, Alex and Chazz and support Mercy Ships please go to www.Justgiving.com/cyclingfrancespain