Le Tour De Vacherin 2018

HHHHHolidays for some of us have now finished, taking us all back to the usual work routines.

During the summer I had the pleasure to work alongside with Vacherin for a great challenge.

Here below I let Owner and Managing director Phil Roker explain a bit more:

Phil over to you:

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Vacherin opening its first ever contract at Imagination - a contract which we are still proud to look after to this day!

To commemorate our 15 years of operation, a small band of ultra-fit(!) team members are going to complete an epic cycle journey, from our office in Hatton Garden to the home of Vacherin, in the Jura region of Switzerland - a total of 1,065km/665miles, with lots of ups and downs, with the aim of raising £15,000 for our chosen charity, Luminary Bakery.

LUMINARY BAKERY

Luminary Bakery have been Vacherin’s partner charity for 12 months. We support this social enterprise in east London, which offers opportunities for women who have experienced social or economicdisadvantage, to build their skills and improve their futures.

In 2017, Luminary Bakery opened their very own café in StokeNewington, launched a stall at Borough Market and began a partnership with Ben & Jerry’s. They also launched a mentoring scheme which Vacherin took part in, pairing professional female volunteers withbakery graduates to help them with their next steps.

37 women have now graduated from Luminary’s programmes with88% going into employment, further training or enterprise. Five new businesses have been created by these entrepreneurial graduates.

Leaving London on September 8th, we will ride almost 100 miles per dayto arrive at The Museum of Vacherin (yes, it really exists!) in the small town of Les Charbonnieres on the day that the rst Vacherin cheese is released.

£15,000 WOULD ENABLE US TO FIT OUT THE LUMINARY TEACHING ROOM TO A HIGH-SPEC PROFESSIONAL KITCHEN

At the moment the women at the bakery are sharing wooden spoons and mixers and are prepping on a domestic kitchen table! With the money raised, we would be able
to fund this large project which would include knocking down a wall for more space, plumbing in a handwash sink and running electrics to hobs, this way each woman would have everything she needs to train in the most professional environment possible, preparing them for professional.

To achieve the £15,000 target that we have set ourselves, we hope tosecure your support through both an online auction and our JustGivingpage.

Our charity page is now up and running - click here to donate

Our auction has also started - click here to visit our auction page

These are the lots that you can currently bid on:

• -  A Vacherin Chef for the evening (at home or at work) with catering support from either Phil Roker, Simon Macfarlane or Tom Rule. Dinner for 6 (excluding alcohol) Choose from four of our seniorVacherin Chefs including Steven Lickley, Masterchef Finalist

• -  Dinner for four at Robin Gill’s restaurant - Sorella

• -  Manchester United football shirt signed by football legend Andy Cole

• -  2 tickets to the HSBC World Seven Series, Twickenham June 2019

• -  18 holes of golf at the stunning Championship Golf Course at The Grove

• -  2 x 500g T bone steaks

• -  A year’s supply of Extract coffee of your choice to your home

• -  Afternoon tea for two at The Luminary Bakery

• -  A day at Appledore with Block and Cleaver farmers and a turkey delivered at Christmas

• -  Hire of a cocktail barman to create three tasty cocktails for up to 30 people

• -  One whole Kent lamb

• -  Whole salmon lleting workshop with a whole salmon to take home with you

  We would love you to forward the details onto your work colleagues and join us in achieving our goal.

We are proud to have helped Phil & his team in providing the cycling clothing for the adventure.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you good luck on your journey.

Stay Safe & See you on your return.

Your Legal Friend

Our friends at Legal asked me to talk about safety for cyclists.

Therefore I am happy to introduce you:

S.E.A.  = Safety Education Action

The SaddleDrunk Method

Every day there are numbers of accidents worldwide involving cyclists.  Here in London, unfortunately, we still have many accidents and some of them are unfortunately fatal.

In my opinion, first of all we need to understand the meaning of the word “ SAFETY  “. Yes you can Google it to find the exact meaning but it depends how you interpret those definitions.

I think there is an unique meaning to “safety on the road” and it is to harmoniously share the roads with all the other users. Mutual understanding and respect it is an essential part of road safety. Each road users, depending on the vehicle, has different requirements in terms of speed, spaces, blind spots etc and we should always be aware of it.

Also, it is very important to avoid reacting to any challenges or confrontations that you might encounter from other road users. It is important to remember that this might end up putting you on the wrong side of the law.

Hence, “ EDUCATION “ is a key factor. This is the “ GOLDEN KEY “ to prevent accidents happening.

Why?

Because by reading & understanding the road codes and signs you will be aware of what you are allowed or not allowed to do while riding your bike on a public road. This will make you an educated cyclist who rides safely and in respect of the codes and other road users.

Awareness courses should be available to all the road users with chances to swap roles on the road to understand more the various dangers for both parties.

Accident free roads is in the public interest and I believe that awareness courses should be organised and funded by local councils or any other agencies that could benefit from it.

Finally, the last and hardest part of the S.E.A. method is “ACTION “.

It should be the easiest point, but the human being by default becomes complaisant after a short period of time.

A little explanation for the latter point is that when we attend courses, we learn something new which we practice immediately. Unfortunately, we don’t always continue practising it and we can slip into bad habits.

Therefore we all need to act responsibly while on the road which means putting into practice all the above, always remembering we are sharing the road with many other users, always following road codes and refraining form confrontations. Let’s just remember that, as per the “Second Law of Newton”, to each action there is a reaction.

Even if you follow all of the above sometimes things can go wrong anyway… Our friends at Your Legal Friend can support you on any cycle crash claim https://www.yourlegalfriend.com/types-of-claim/road-accidents/cycling-accidents/
 

Be Safe on the Road We Only Live Once.

Stefano

The Best Cities to Cycle in 2018,Part 1.

Ciao a tutti,

We will start a series of tips about cycling in Cities and telling about this is a special guest is Flora Dallas,she is a content writer for Fat Lama - the world’s fasted growing peer-to-peer rental platform.

Copenhagen, Denmark

The prevalence of the cycling culture in Scandinavia make it hard to pick out a clear winner, however, if one had to choose, Copenhagen probably takes the biscuit as the ultimate city-cycle experience. You can explore one of the most picturesque harbours in Europe, via the 454 km of cycle tracks. In fact it is so popular that whole infrastructure in place to promote cycling - with bikes being given traffic light preference in rush hour, cycle only bridges and superhighways all in place. In fact cycling is so popular here that only 29% of households even own cars!  

Cambridge, UK

If you are planning an easy city break ‘staycation’ then you could do a lot worse than exploring the ancient colleges, parks and, of course, punting in Cambridge. Though the UK is perhaps not as up to date as their Scandinavian counterparts when it comes to cycling; Cambridge is truly the exception, as its high proportion of students and flat landscape have cultivated a long history of cycling as the primary means of transport. Indeed, you will find it easy to navigate with 30% of the city being traffic free and over 80 miles of cycle tracks to play with. If you do not want the hassle of taking your bike on such a short trip, you can always borrow bikes locally and cheaply from people nearby on peer-to-peer rental sites like Fat Lama.

Chicago, USA

If you are looking for a US city break with a cycling twist then look no further! Chicago with its famous Millenium Park and Navy Pier, make it an ideal candidate for cycle exploration. What’s more, it has the infrastructure to back it up, having undertaken some major cycle improvements in recent years through the Loop Link transport project. Currently, it has over 200 miles of cycle paths in place (set to rise to over 600 by 2020) plus the 18.5 mile lake front trail, making it the cycle-friendly major city in the US.

Until next time stay safe on the road.

GDPR....Data Protection Laws 25th May 2018

Dear SaddleDrunkers,

I don’t want to bore you with copious amount of emails that you probably already received, therefore a polite reminder might be worth it sharing with you. 

With the revision of the (GDPR) Data Protection Laws starting today, we wanted to touch base with our customers to highlight the direction we are taking.

As detailed within our Terms and Conditions, all data is held is at company level and at no time is it available to any other organisation.  

As you have selected to opt in to subscribe in our newsletter and have an ongoing relationship with us, we can continue to work in the same way as we do now after May 25th.

If you don’t want to receive any longer our communications, you need to follow a simple step which is to unsubscribe.

Should you have any queries or want to see or amend the details we hold on your company, please do not hesitate to contact us..

Kind Regards & Have a good weekend.

Be Safe on the Rides!!

Stefano

The Passionate Italian Weekend

Aprile 2018

Ciao a Tutti,

It has been a long time that I have not written something about Cycling Experiences to share with all our followers.

AYRTON SENNA MEMORIAL

I will try not to bore you too much.

Few weekends ago a group of 16 from the SaddleDrunk Cycling Friends Club ( join us on Strava via this link ) went for a long weekend in Faenza, Emilia Romagna, Italy, Europe, Planet Earth.

They flew out early friday morning from the beautiful London to Bologna, capital of the some of the best Italian food…Like Bolognese Sauce the way it is called outside Italy,  Ragu another good one, Cappelletti, Tortellini, Ravioli , Tortelli, la “ “Mortazza” (Mortadella) & much more…not to mention that Bologna host the oldest university in Europe….

Agriturismo La Sabbiona

SD staff & I pick them up from the airport and whisked them away to Imola to have an amazing lunch inside the tragically famous Formula 1 race track  where 2 pilots lost their lifes long time ago…RIP Ratzenberg & Senna where we visited their memorials. Really a big touch feeling for me as I saw it with my eyes that tremendous weekend…

OK!!..let’s get a grip and bang on Cycling…We got to the lovely Agriturismo La Sabbiona, after check & prepared out bikes we headed out to the lovely Brisighella a Medieval town.

Local Delicacies

After our lovely ride in the hills to get new fresh oxygen in our lungs, plenty of fun during the ride including a lovely crash in the first downhill.

We refreshed ourselves & headed out to Town for a meal in a traditional Osteria.

Osteria la Sghisa as usual made us feeling at home with their friendly staff and the astonishing food where we partied until late to celebrate Laura's Birthday.

Laura's Gluten Free cake

The Saturday, we woke up gently by the sounds of the "Galletto" in the farm.Followed up by an Italian & Intercontinental breakfast fuelling up for our day on the bike. 

We spent all day on a bike touring around the hills and preparing for the Granfondo Le Cime Di Romagna 2018 the following day organised by the Gruppo Sportivo Ciclistico Avis Faenza.

Local Art

In the evening we had another amazing meal at Casa Spadoni where everyone was able to enjoy more culinary delicacies from the area of Emilia Romagna. 

Italian Style Aperitif Time

A team photo at the feed station!!

The Sunday morning we had an early wake due to the 7:30 start of the event.The 3 various distances were perfect for the different group abilities. The distance covered were Corto, Medio & Lungo. 

Everyone had great fun,and we all enjoyed the “LOCAL’s” attentions, the friendly event’s staff,the well organised event and routes and the well stocked feed stations.

We were awarded 2 trophies due to be the furthest team. The trophies were a really long & thick      “ SALAMI “ and a big ceramic vase from one of the local ceramist in Faenza.

Faenza is very well known in the world thanks to be the home of Ceramics.

Prize Ceremony to be the farthest travelled Team.

The last day of our trip was a realxing day where we had a really slow where we enjoyed our breakfast.

Our local host Serena owner of La Sabbiona, prepared our class room with flour,eggs, rolling pins, chef’s hat & all other items needed to complete the cooking course.

At the end of the course all the “students” were able to eat the food made during the class & well earned after sweating.

As the weekend was more than amazing, we will make this an annual event for the club.Therefore if you like to be part of just join us at ride@saddledrunk.com

I hope you enjoyed the reading and remember to be safe on the road.

Ciao

SD 

Setting new best FTP's while making Pasta.