“I do not normally do these absurd things,” swears Lord Stevenson of Coddenham. Six hours a day for six straight days, the 57-year-old CEO of British financial services firm HBOS pedaled his weary way from Land’s End on England’s southernmost tip to Lowestoft on the North Sea -- a 500-mile jaunt. “If I had known how dreadful the hills of Devon and Cornwall would be, I would have escaped on foot,” he confides sorely.
But it was all for art’s sake. A violinist in his youth, Dennis Stevenson -- ennobled in 1999 by Queen Elizabeth for his services to finance and culture -- chairs the annual Aldeburgh music festival in Suffolk. Founded in 1948 by composer Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears, the festival presents new musical pieces and promotes the education of young artists. The charity ride helps support the festival through donations that are pegged to the distance completed.
Stevenson, who’d abandoned two-wheelers as an Oxford undergraduate 38 years earlier after riding the wrong way on a roundabout, trained for the ordeal by riding his bike on weekends and taking the occasional spin around Westminster. His fellow rider on the long journey -- the festival’s 37-year-old chief executive, Jonathan Reekie -- set an allegro con brio tempo.
Nevertheless, Stevenson stayed the course, raising £100,000 ($155,700), three times more than sponsors expected. “Not bad for an old fart like me,” says the lord.
