Sat on the starting line of the 2012 Right To Play bike ride, I was on the receiving-end of a few funny looks.

“You're riding 300miles – on that?” said one fellow rider, pointing at my wheels.

Amid a field of 130, there were some pretty impressive road bikes.

My cycle know-how could be written on the back of a puncture-repair blister, but my attention was drawn to a bike from last year's Tour de France valued at £10k+; and dozens of carbon-framed offerings that could be lifted with one finger.

Then there was my bike: a £200 hybrid with fat tyres and flat pedals.

I'd taken a similarly high tec approach to my kit. While almost everyone else had cycling shoes with cleats to improve their pedal-lift-efficiency (eh?), I was in trainers.

Top of the range gel shorts, aerodynamic crash helmets, triathlon handlebars: most people had spent a good £1,000 on accessories. No single piece of my kit came to over a tenner.

While others were powered along by energy gels formulated by NASA; my fuel was Caramel Wafers formulated by Tunnocks.

No point of principle: it was simply the case that this was my bike, and the manner in which I'd carried out my training. I'm no cyclist: just a bloke with a pushbike.

But, as three days riding progressed through four countries, the titters and knowing grins subsided.

We started in the beautiful Dutch city of Maastricht: going through chocolate box villages and along canal tow-paths.

A real highlight was our lunch stop in Ypres, after passing through the Mennin Gate memorial to 55,000 Commonwealth soldiers of The Great War - whose bodies still lay undiscovered on the battlefields of Flanders.

And we crossed the channel to Dover: experiencing the lovely country lanes, and unlovely weather and road surfaces of Kent and south London.

I'd done 3,000 miles of training for the ride: but still found it one of the most difficult things I've ever attempted (made 25% more difficult for me than anybody else, according to a sports scientist I rode with, due to my bike and lack of proper footwear).

But I didn't let the low-tec equipment hamper me. I rode up at the front with triathletes on super-bikes, and sped for miles with the peleton at 21mph through the Belgian countryside.

I lost count of the number of riders (including one Tour pro) who took their hats off to what I was achieving with a clearly unsuitable bike; or the number who called me 'an amazing rider'.

There were low points too: towards the end, with 275miles in my legs, I simply couldn't haul the thing up the steepest Kentish hills. But the encouragement of fellow riders kept me going.

I was elated to reach the finish-line in Greenwich – a fantastic experience I wouldn't have missed for the world.

I did all of this for a charity called Right To Play: which helps kids in poverty all over the world. It's a great cause, and if you think my efforts deserve a small reward, it would be great of you could make a donation to them.

You can do this by clicking the 'donate' button on this page, or by texting BLUE97 £3 to 70070. Thanks.