A couple of my colleagues and I are thinking of doing some sort of longish distance ride to raise money for charity. Three of us so far – a marathon runner, an ironman triathlete and me up for it so far but there are also a few less fit folk would like to get involved.

Time is an issue so I would say LEJOG is out as we can't afford to take a week to do something. We're based in Glasgow so I was thinking riding the length of Scotland – Gretna to John 'o' Groats – in four days, but not sure that's really very impressive as a fund raiser, but maybe it is. We don't want to do something that's going to cost money to enter, like London-Paris.

We're planning on doing it May 2011 probably to give us plenty of time to get organised and probably have a 4-5 day window to do something reasonably impressive and the fit ones amongst us are happy to ride 120ish mile days reasonably quickly with maybe the less fit joining us on 'stages'.

Any suggestions?

Ride all the 7 Stanes. In 48hrs.
As a group since just riding sections when you feel up to it is less than impressive.
I know it's been done in 24hrs, and you ride between each centre too.

Option 2: 3 people: 3 grades per trail centre (black, red, blue / green). One grade per person per trail centre. Then you all ride to the next centre and swap grades and ride again.

Maybe start in Peebles town centre for a bit of publicity.

Just an idea or two.

Good idea but we want to do a road ride, the company I work for has 10,000 employees in the UK and they wouldn't really relate to riding a few trail centres in 24 hours.

With 10,000 employees, you each chaperone several members of staff per grade per trail centre. Then ride to the next and so on.
Get some hire bikes maybe and thus get the local community engaged too.
This is, after all, a mountain bike forum! Don't do tarmac, sorry!

This is, after all, a mountain bike forum

Yeh but there is still nothing particularly impressive about riding round trail centres so that is a no-no. Sorry for intruding on your 'mountain bike forum'. I didn't realise some folk were so insular.

coast to coast can be done in 4/5 days easy and sounds fairly imprssive for the fat lay-a-bouts you work with.

Yeh c2c was something I thought about too and we could look at doing that in a day to make it a bit more 'special'.

BHF?

with maybe the less fit joining us on 'stages'

Touché.
If you are not very fit, then why not LEJOG as a 3 man relay. It won't take that many days.

I know you say you don't want to pay to enter something like the BHF London to Paris, but £100 for a three-day event involving a ferry crossing is cheap as chips – it sounds like they're barely covering their admin costs. If my experience of doing their London to Brighton ride is anything to go by, it'll be very well organised and a lot of fun to boot.

Alternatively, if you're in Scotland, maybe set yourself a challenge involving lots of climbing and descending, rather than distance covered. Something like the equivalent of riding up and down Mount Everest (about 9000m IIRC) over five days?

If you are not very fit, then why not LEJOG as a 3 man relay. It won't take that many days.

Well the 3 of us that are in for it at the moment are pretty fit – marathon runner, triathlete and I commute on the bike 40 miles a day 3-5 days a week then long rides at the weekend. It's the rest of them that are unfit, lazy lumps 😉

I like the climbing thing but I'm really looking for something 'civilians' can relate to as a challenge.

Cycle to all four corners of Scotland – north east (John O'groats), north west (Cape Wrath ?) , south east (Berwick) and south west (Wigtown) – would easily accomodate the novice cyclists as well as the more committed.

If you want to include more folk do it as a relay – then the less fit can do short stages and the more fit longer ones.

"how far can we get from glasgow in 24 hrs" perhaps?

Yeh tj the 24 hour thing is on my list of things to do so might consider that one, ideally doing on the longest day.