Kerrang!’s own Nick Ruskell will be donning the Lycra and pedalling his wheels of steel to Download, alongside Enter Shikari, metal-loving scientist Matt Taylor and more...
How are you getting to Download? Car? Classic. Train? Pricey, packed and perpetually unreliable. Helicopter to the airport next door? Only if you've got as much money as Gene Simmons.
While the rest of the Kerrang! team head up in a minibus, Senior Commissioning Editor and Lord Of Darkness Nick Ruskell will be joining the legendary Heavy Metal Truants in going by bike to raise money for charity. Over three days, he and the HM Truants crew – including organiser and Kerrang! alumnus Alex Milas, Enter Shikari's Rob Rolfe, and Dr. Matt Taylor, the metal-loving scientist who led the team to park the Rosetta probe on that comet that time – will cover almost 200 miles, starting at Alexandra Palace in London, and finishing on the hallowed turf of the festival site just in time for bar opening time on the Friday.
"Even though my participation has basically guaranteed a wet festival, it's truly exciting to be joining the Truants this year," says our man. "I love cycling big things like this, and I've always wanted to join them but for one reason or another I was always too busy in the days before Download. It always looks like a laugh, and I'm looking forward to helping them continue raising money for awesome causes.
"It's going to be hard work, but still an infinitely easier way of getting to the festival than the times I've had to round up the rest of the staff after the Kerrang! Awards and drive them up there myself. And the delicious pint our Editor Luke Morton will have waiting for me when I arrive will make the sore legs worth it…"
This will be the 10th time HM Truants have travelled to the festival in the saddle, and along with other sponsored cycling events they do, raised £1,000,000 for their chosen charities Teenage Cancer Trust, Nordoff Robbins, Save The Children and Childline. Previous participants have included Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, Amon Amarth singer Johann Hegg, and Orange Goblin frontman Ben Ward.
For more info on HM Truants, and to find out about the ways you can get involved, head to Heavymetaltruants.com.
Download Festival takes place at Donington Park on June 10-12. Get your tickets now.
