This year a group of intrepid cyclists cycled from Canterbury, via Buddhafield, to Faraid Head, over 1700 miles! Completely self supported they visited every Buddhist Centre and Retreat Centre on route, all to raise money for the Alfoxton Park project. Leaving Canterbury on 12th of July, they made it to Faraid Head on 13th August and then onto Dhanakosa on the 19th

Taking part in this ride was: Kit de Heger, Sebastion Evans-Thornton, Matt Clark, James Anderson, Olivia Haywood Smith, Holly Taylor and Jack Foulkes.

Alfoxton Park was once home to William and Dorothy Wordsworth and was a pivotal place in the birth and growth of Romantic poetry and literature in England. The building had been largely falling into ruin after its last incarnation as a Hotel, until it was acquired by the Triratna Buddhist Community in 2020. Since then it has been a place of great spiritual practice alongside the building renovations, giving hundreds of people a dynamic context to practice Buddhism and Meditation in harmony with the beautiful land and immense creative history of the building. The community are working as custodians of this important space, but they are in need of funds to continue this work, we aim to help them raise some money to be put towards the massive task of rescuing this building from collapse! Find out more about their mission here.

Inspired by the tenacity of the community at Alfoxton and the grass roots utopianism that exists within the Triratna Buddhist Community, we lived on the road eating, sleeping and meditating together, just as the Buddha and his followers did 2500 years ago - but this time with Bicycles.... We travelled in semi-retreat conditions building sangha together and deepening our practice through our journey, ritual and a connection to the land we call home. To enshrine this journey Kit rode an Omnium cargo bike carrying a (lightweight) Buddha to ritualise the journey. Made by Indrabodhi this acted as the heart of the journey, taking the Buddha north and doing Puja together looking out over the North Sea.

Videos of how it went can be found here!

If you are inspired by the Buddhist path or want to protect this bit of English heritage, please do give generously and share this page around. Together we can turn the Wheel...