It's 5:30am on Monday morning (10th June 2013 to be precise). " Wake up it's a beautiful morning" by the Boo Radleys  is blasting out of the speakers at the camp site.   "I shouldn't be up at this time" is one of the lines of this songs which rings so true to me on this day. It's not a dream although my head wishes it was.  I've been awake since around 4am -thanks to the and chirpy wildlife and early sunrise in the north of Scotland  where the sun appears at not long after 3am.  Yes I'm back on the Deloitte Ride Across Britain ("RAB") again, aiming to cycle 220 miles over 2 days, to help Cisco raise funds for the paralympic athletes via the Paralympics GB charity.

The "RAB", as we call it, is a cycle ride from John O'Groats, in the very north of Scotland, to Lands End, in the very south of England -top to bottom of the United Kingdom, in fact.  Cisco supports and encourages us to take part -around 50 of us were taking on typically one or two stages, with a few mad colleagues doing the whole 9 days of 100 mile+ daily cycling!  Yes we had "free" days off work, away from my usual work in Cisco Data Center Services around Cisco Domain Ten^SM -committing to achieve a fundraising target -however it's not quite what most people would call a holiday!  And we also had a "Virtual RAB" in our offices to ensure everyone gets an opportunity to help further the fundraising cause.

As the video shows, we cycled through some amazing scenery, connected with new colleagues across Cisco UK & Ireland, and renewed old friendships.  Our fund raising is in progress and I'd appreciate any and all donations here!

This is a very challenging but definitely fulfilling event -and I bet painful if you're not quite ready for it!  I first took part in 2011 for one day, and took on two days in quite horrendous weather in September 2012.  Last year, the Cisco team raised around