Owain Wyn Evans has 19 days until he sets off on a 400-mile bike ride through four nations, and he has admitted he does not feel ready. “I’ve had a couple of wobbles,” he told Sara Cox on Wednesday morning.
The Ammanford-raised presenter sets off from Glasgow on Monday 9 November and is due into central Cardiff on Friday 13 November. The ride for BBC Children in Need takes in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales.
“Over the weekend I was like, I’m so not ready!” he said on the Radio 2 breakfast show. “I’ve been doing everything that Professor Greg Whyte has been telling me to do but because this is all very alien to me, Sara…”
“When I think about what I need to do, you know, 400 miles, 4 nations over the space of 4 or 5 days, I just don’t feel like it’s a thing I’m able to do.”
‘Just keep pedalling’: Sara Cox’s advice from the woman who did it last year
Cox knows what is coming. Her run, jog and walk from Kielder Forest to Pudsey in Leeds raised £11.7m last year, and the Pudsey backpack she carried the whole way now passes to Evans.
“Well, you’ve got to take it one day at a time,” she told him. “That’s how you’ve got to try and tackle it.”
“Don’t think about the whole thing. Just keep pedalling, that’s all you’ve got to do, and you will do it, but there is no Diggity, no doubt, that this is a tough challenge, Owain!”
‘I’m actually in my Lycra as we speak’: training in the rain with Professor Greg Whyte
Cox had a warning too. “I don’t want to say the W word to you, but the weather has taken a slight turn, hasn’t it?”
Evans was about to find out: “I’m actually in my Lycra as we speak, because I’m about to go out and do a little session with Greg Whyte. It’s been pouring down here and also quite cold to be honest, quite chilly.”
“You try and get as ready as you can and there are certain things you can control, but the weather certainly isn’t something we can control.”
Whyte, the sports scientist who got Cox to Pudsey last year, is working with Evans throughout. The ride is the longest ever attempted for a Radio 2 fundraising challenge, the BBC says, and it has still not published the route or said which Welsh towns he will pass through on the final leg to Cardiff.
From a 24-hour drumathon to five days in the saddle, then the Swansea Grand
It is a long way from his last challenge for the charity. In 2021 he drummed for 24 hours on BBC Breakfast and raised more than £3.8m, by the BBC’s count.
The ride comes a year after emergency surgery to remove his gallbladder took him off air. Weeks after the finish he opens as the Spirit of the Forest in Snow White at the Swansea Grand.
Before Cox, Paddy McGuinness rode 300 miles across three nations on a Chopper in 2024, and Vernon Kay walked from Leicester to Bolton the year before. Evans has said he has “a lot to live up to”.
The ride can be followed on Radio 2 and BBC Sounds from 9 November, and donations go through bbcchildreninneed.co.uk.
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