Try audax events for less than a tenner. Can use gps or the Les Charnley shell road maps - usually pass a couple of cycle friendly cafes and often tea and cake at the finish. The real reason to cycle.

@Les Charnley wrote:

Hi Everyone, being serious for once, I have read the topics posted about the Cheshire Cat Sportive at the end of March. It appears that maybe 18 club riders are taking part and its good to see that so many are fired up. The event appears to be taking up to 2500 enteries at approx. £32.50 each, so about £80,000 will be taken by the organizers. From reading the details, it is linked with a Cancer Charity BUT it appears that any monies going to the Charity is raised by sponsorship OVER and Above the entry fee. So is it that None of the £80,000 is going to charity, if I have the wrong end of the stick let me know. Once members have quenched the appetite's on these massive high profile commercial events that appear to boost business profits, would you consider other smaller events. My little rant is just to prick your future conscience as Kid Scan is putting on the Peak 100k a week or so later from Macclesfield with 2000mt. of climbing, with all monies going to help CHILDREN WITH CANCER and as yet NO OTHER WEAVER VALLEY RIDER has entered even after the organizer has posted all the info on OUR WEB SITE for several weeks and the entry fee is £25.00.

Thank you very much for your support Les.
While we offer sponsor forms etc to everyone who enters we don't expect that people will raise it as they take part in sportives pretty much every week.
We hope that some people will be happy to raise some sponsorshpi but if not we do make some money from the £25 entry fee.
The more people we get taking part, the more money the charity will raise.

Fingers crossed we break the 200 people mark!

While quite a number of sportives are devoted to supporting charities there are a number which aren't and are simply in place to provide a platform for riding. For example I wasn't aware The Cheshire Cat even supported a charity so interesting to hear, I didn't enter it thinking that I would be supporting a charity anyway!

Lets not forget that out of £80,000 there will be running costs for the event and also the organisers are a business so they will be taking out operating costs, salaries, NI, tax etc etc. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear turnovers of £100,000 per event.

Les I am 100% in agreement with what you have said!!

I did the Macc in October in fact chatted with you at the start, (not at the finish you were long gone 🙂 )

I have been put off the Cheshire cat this year due to the more expensive entry etc.. I will be doing the peak 100!

Cancer Research UK are the charity involved with the Cheshire Cat, not sure of the deal but I worked with them a while back and they will not allow use of their logo etc for a small amount of money so they must be looking at a decent return on investment. (they are of course latecomers to the cycling market and trying to gain a foothold).

Anyway I suppose its a case of do what suits, I have ridden the Cat and to be honest the Mac monster was better signed, had a better feed stop and the guys were really keen so I wish them all the best!

Hopefully we will see a few more yellow and blue jerseys at the peak 100 😀

@bennjones wrote:

Hopefully we will see a few more yellow and blue jerseys at the peak 100 😀

Looking forward to seeing you there too Benn!

Thank you to everyone for their support.