A fitter Charles Dampney, corporate broker at City Capital Corporation, has returned in triumph after cycling 350 miles in five days on the ‘Help for Heroes Big Battlefield Ride’, in aid of servicemen and women seriously injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ride, foreshadowed here in April, took him and his mostly younger fellow cyclists from Nelson’s HMS Victory in Portsmouth by ship across the Channel, through the wartime battlefields of northern France and back to the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Dampney started and finished the journey in his City suit, though the ‘hat police’ only let him wear his bowler hat for the last leg.

He recalls, ‘It was a truly humbling experience to ride alongside seriously injured servicemen.’ These included ‘a paratrooper powering a tricycle uphill using only his arms – he’d lost his left leg – and Craig, who is completely blind because he went back into his hit tank to help a mate who was burning and it exploded, cycling on the back end of a tandem’.

At the end, Dampney received his reward from The Sun page-three girl Peta Todd. And he has the satisfaction of knowing that he played his part in attracting total sponsorship of £2 million for a cause that many are surprised to learn still has to depend on private charity.