“The finances are grim.”
Skittles star Steve Rosewarne is set for a Spanish cycling challenge to raise some much needed funds for his local club.
Skittles is a South-Western delicacy, but with dropping numbers and falling funds, Rosewarne and his brother Kevin are ready for the challenge of a lifetime, as they get ready to cycle from Murcia, Spain back home to Bristol to raise funds for their club.
“On June 11th, my brother and I are flying to Murcia, in the southeast of Spain, then spending a couple of days with our friend Paul, then we’re going to cycle back to Bristol over about 15 days.
“It’s all for the club, as their finances, well, they’re grim basically.”
Both brothers are keen cyclists, and this is the second year in a row that they have taken to the wheels to raise much-needed funds.
“We ride abroad quite often anyway, to be fair, so I volunteered to do some fundraising for the club.
“It is quite a long, about 1500km, something like that. It’s a long way.”
Rosewarne is no stranger to a challenge on the road, having taken part in some of the hardest road cycling challenges out there, proving he is the man for the job to keep Bemmyx Skittles going.
“I can’t do anything without it being a challenge,” he stated. “I used to cycle with my son, mountain biking, but it proved to be a bit hard. So I decided I’d try something else on a bike.
“I took up road cycling, and I found lots of challenges that I could do on a bike on the road.”
So, he kick-started his ‘challenge era’ the way anyone would; by taking part in the oldest and most prestigious long-distance cycling event in the world.
“I searched, ‘iconic event’, and what came up was the Paris-Brest-Paris, which you do in about 4-and-a-half days. It’s a long way, and I thought, ‘I don’t mind doing that’. I didn’t have a clue about it, but I managed to do it.
“I’ve done London to Edinburgh and back in five days. It’s just personal challenges and socialising with people. It’s great. I love it.”
The game’s heartlands are in the south west of England, with counties such as Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire having many participants.
In the current financial climate, with pubs closing down at an alarming rate, it is becoming harder to find people to join a team, especially younger people.
However, down at BemmyX, the future may well be just around the corner.
“Last season, we had a couple young people come down. I say young, they were early mid-to-early 30’s, we’re all fogies really.
“They just faded away, because I think it is quite hard for them to keep as motivated as we are. It is a sport for the older generation. Our latest opponents were even older than us.
“It’s not a young person’s thing. Our ‘sticker up’, the lad that puts the pins back up, he’s 15, he’s dead keen to play for us, but he’s not old enough yet. We can’t wait for him to be able to play.
“It used to be that there were teams associated with every pub, but as the pubs closed or they got rid of their alleys, the sport has faded out really.”
To really bring home that statement, he ended with this,
“We don’t play at one pub in South Bristol. It’s all clubs. So there is no real appeal to youngsters.”
