Housing worker aims to go the extra mile for homeless in Watford
A COMMUNITY housing manager from Watford is set to go the extra mile – actually the extra 150 miles (240km) – on a sponsored cycle from the town to iconic Tintern Abbey on the banks of the River Wye in South Wales.
Reuel Thompson, 34, who lives in St Albans but works at Watford Community Housing (WCH) in Clarendon Road, hopes the two-day ride will raise in excess of £500 for New Hope.
He has worked for WCH for two-and-a-half years and before that he had spells with Dacorum Borough Council and Hightown Housing Association in Hemel Hempstead.
Reuel chose to support us after helping purchase and decorate a new HopeHome earlier this year.
He will be setting out on Thursday, July 24, heading west for an overnight stop near Swindon. The following day he plans to complete the ride to Tintern. His schedule will mean cycling for around 20 hours in the two days.
His training has not gone well as he has suffered heel and arch pain in his left foot due to inflammation of the plantar fascia, a thick band of tissue on the bottom of the foot. But he has trained through the pain.
His destination, Tintern Abbey, is a Welsh icon originally founded as a modest wooden church by Cistercian monks in 1131. In 1269 they began to build a new abbey church and they didn’t stop until they had created a masterpiece of British Gothic architecture. However, the abbey fell to charming ruin following Henry VIII’s Reformation in 1535.
Reuel first visited Tintern more than a decade ago when he stopped there during a ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats “It always stuck in my mind as a beautiful place that I would like to visit again. When I started to think of where I could reasonably cycle to from Watford in two days, it all started to come together.”
He is no stranger to raising money for worthy causes. The Land’s End to John O’Groats ride raised money for Breast Cancer UK and four years later the same charity benefited from his ride from Mizen to Malin Head in the Republic of Ireland where he was born.
In 2019 he raised money for Water Aid by drinking only water for a year and in 2022 he raised cash for Centre 33, a charity for the homeless in St Albans, by walking 10,000 steps every day for a year and, incredibly, walking 100,000 steps in a single day.
As for his next challenge? Reuel is set to be married at St Albans Abbey to fiancée, Isabelle Lepore, on Saturday, September 27. “The wedding planning is taking up so much of my time I can’t plan for anything else just now!” he said.
Watford Community Housing manager Reuel Thompson is pictured at the end of another epic cycle ride, from London to Paris.
We wish Reuel good luck on his exciting trek. To support him visit newhope.org.uk/reuel