06/10/2026
🧒 Most of us wouldn't dream of riding 900 miles to Barcelona. Rupert Brooke did it at the age of 10. 🎉
Over two and a half weeks last summer, Rupert pedaled from London to Barcelona, across England, France, and Spain, carrying his own kit the whole way. That's roughly 50 miles a day, day after day, for a boy who hadn't yet started high school.
And the Pyrenees stood right in the middle of it.
Those climbs break grown cyclists. Long, relentless, the kind of gradients that have grown men reaching for the bailout gear and questioning their life choices. Rupert rode up them anyway, with his mum Jess turning the pedals beside him.
Rupert rode in memory of his dad, Tom, the man who first put him on a bike. Tom was killed in an accident at work when Rupert was just four years old.
In the years since, cycling became Rupert's way of staying close to him. Every mile, a conversation. Every climb, a way of carrying him along.
This wasn't his first big ride, either.
At seven, Rupert became the youngest person ever to cycle from London to Paris, 200-odd miles in memory of the same dad. Barcelona was the next mountain, quite literally.
Both rides raised money for the Children's Bereavement Centre in Newark, the charity that helped his family through the loss of Tom and, later, Rupert's grandmother. It's a place that helps grieving children find the words when there aren't any.
And Rupert wanted other kids to have what he had.
He didn't just finish the ride. He beat his fundraising target, too, turning his own grief into something that will quietly help other young people through theirs.
Picture it. A 10-year-old, fully loaded with his own gear, grinding up Pyrenean passes that most of us only ever ride in our daydreams. Not because anyone made him. Because he wanted to honor his father and help children walking the same hard road he once walked.
We talk a lot in cycling about suffering on the bike: the pain cave, the bonk, the wall. Rupert reminded everyone what the bike is really for.
It carries us through hills and headwinds, and sometimes through the things words can't reach.
Most kids his age were enjoying their summer holidays. Rupert spent his climbing mountains for the dad he lost and the children he'll never meet.
Chapeau, Rupert. Tom would be unbelievably proud.
