On 4 July 2009 four old school friends will set off on a gruelling, self funded, 14 day challenge of a lifetime in memory of our good friend Adam Clayton. Split into two teams we will cover a total of 150 miles a day and, just to make things a little more interesting, our chosen method of transport will be the bicycle! Covering a total of 1800 miles, from England to Southern Portugal we will cycle. Taking on the heat, the hills, and certainly gallons of H2O, we hope that our ambitious journey will encourage people to donate to a cause which is close to all our hearts, the Adam Clayton Foundation.

Our journey will begin at the Downs School in West Berkshire where we all met 13 years ago. Our first stop will be in sea-side Poole where we will make a short overnight stay, catching the 7 o’clock ferry to Cherbourg the next morning. After a short ferry crossing we will set off (hopefully on the right side of the road!) along the west coast of France. From there we will head for Bordeaux and then onto the Pyrenees. Having tackled the mountains we will endure the peaks and plains of Spain and on into the blistering heat of Portugal. We aim to arrive at Pine Cliffs, a golf resort on the southernmost point of the Algarve, on Saturday 18th July, just 14 days after our departure.

Losing our close friend Adam to a brain tumour in 2008 we collectively felt a need to 'do something’. We wanted to show how much his friendship had meant to us, but we also wanted to somehow create a legacy for him. We decided that one way to do this would be to set up Adam's very own charity.

A few dozen emails, telephone calls, and extended lunch breaks later, the not so imaginatively-named Adam Clayton Foundation was born.

The aim of the Foundation is to encourage, and give a helping hand to young people from all walks of life to pursue a career in the medical profession. There has never been more of a need to help those who dream of studying at university but, for one reason or another, feel that it is beyond their reach. We were all fortunate enough to benefit from a university education, so why shouldn't others?

Over the coming years we hope to raise enough money to help school leavers in West Berkshire, as it was here at the local comprehensive school that we all met. We will achieve this by carrying out various money raising events, beginning with the Ride 4 Clayton challenge in July 2009. The challenge for us of setting up a foundation has been the opportunity to be able to establish something now which will benefit students in West Berkshire every year, forever. If Adam could have put his name to anything, we are sure that this would have been it.

Whether on the golf course or in the class room, Adam always strove to fulfil his potential and we hope that his foundation will help many others to follow in his footsteps.