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Cyclist smashes London-Paris record

Jonathan Parker completes trip in 12.5 hours

A cyclist has smashed the record for the fastest bicycle ride from London to Paris. Jonathan Parker completed the trip in 12.5 hours – including the five-hour ferry journey – raising over £10,000 for Cyclists Fighting Cancer in the process.

Founded in 2005, Cyclists Fighting Cancer gives new bikes, tandems and specially adapted trikes to children and young people who have been affected by cancer throughout the UK. By 33, Parker had lost his mother and two uncles to cancer and this year his father also died of the disease. Donations can be made via his JustGiving page (link is external).

That page mentions a London to Paris record of 21h30m and we’ve also found another unofficial time (link is external) of 17h32m, but Parker was aiming to do considerably better than both.

After doing the 59 miles from Greenwich to Newhaven in 2h28m, he then had the five-hour ferry crossing. From there, it was 110 miles to Paris.

With 40 miles to go, Parker was an hour ahead of his target time, which would have seen him arrive in Paris in under 15 hours. This was despite it being 30 degrees his having battled a slight headwind for much of the way.

In the end, the official recorded time was 12h31m26s. Parker’s efforts are all the more impressive for the fact that he was once told he may not be able to walk again and would definitely not be able to participate in sports.

After being involved in a serious accident a few years ago, Parker broke all his limbs and lost eight pints of blood. With more than his fair share of metal in his body, he says he suffers a lot of pain when training in cold or wet conditions, but he now competes in time trials for Team Bottrill.