Cambridge stop in Lublin to Dublin charity ride
Endurance cyclist Eoghan McHugh is cycling from Lublin in Poland to Dublin, Ireland – a 4,000km route – to raise awareness of climate change and to raise funds for UK-based environmental charity Protect Earth.
The challenge – Eoghan’s second transcontinental cycle ride (the first being Morocco-Istanbul in 2020) – began in Lublin on September 1 and Eoghan (pronounced ‘Owen’) is due to arrive in Cambridge, part of the UK leg of the eight-country trip, tomorrow (Thursday, September 29).
When he spoke to the Cambridge Independent, Eoghan was in Nancy in France. “I’m 2,400km into the challenge so far,” he notes, “so more than halfway and I’m still on schedule, believe it or not.”
For the challenge, the 38-year-old adventurer is cycling, on average, around 150km each day. So far Eoghan has ridden through six countries. He started off in Poland and then went into Germany, the Czech Republic, back into Germany, Austria, Switzerland and then France. Next stop is the UK.
“I take the ferry from Dieppe in France across to Newhaven,” he explains, “Newhaven straight up to Cambridge, probably through London.
“From Cambridge then it’s off to Sheffield, Sheffield across to the Liverpool area, and there has been an office for Verano in Glasgow but they don’t want to participate in this any longer so originally the idea was to go from the Liverpool area up to Glasgow, across Northern Ireland and then down south, but with the coming terrible weather and shorter days, we’ve decided to go from Liverpool straight across, either through Holyhead or through Liverpool back to Dublin.”
We heard the challenge came about because Lublin rhymes with Dublin? “Not exactly quite as poetic as that,” says Eoghan, who was born in Ireland and emigrated to Canada at the age of five, “but it does read well as a headline.
“A company, MDL Solutions, as well as Verano, approached me and asked if I would do this ride. Verano are based primarily in Lublin but they have operations all around the world – they have offices all around the world and they have partners as well all around the world.
“And what they wanted me to do was try and connect the dots between some of the partners through Europe starting in Lublin and then finishing in Dublin.
“It seemed interesting and tantalising to me. I love Ireland, I was actually born in Dublin, and I’ve cycled through countries I hadn’t been to previously: Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland.
“I’ve now been to them all, I’ve now ticked them all off the box. I can even say that I cycled across the Czech Republic in two days and Switzerland in one. So for me there were some great challenges.”
[Read more: Our guide to all the events at Camcycle’s 2022 Cambridge Festival of Cycling]
Eoghan concludes: “There’s something tremendously romantic about the whole idea of just hopping on your bike and tootling off into the sunset, and there’s something around the charm of the whole thing.
“I’ve done bike rides where I’ve ridden all night, all night and all day, off-road, and what you find is you’re a witness to life going on around you. It’s really special.”
Follow Eoghan’s progress at mdlsoln.com/coddiwomple/.
