CLIMATE activists have set off on a 500-mile cycle to Glasgow ahead of the COP26 climate summit later this week.

The COP26 cycle ride, made up of Extinction Rebellion and Eco Action Families campaigners, aims to travel 60 miles a day across the country on the trek from Brighton, inviting people they meet to “unleash their inner Attenborough”.

Each night on their nine-day journey, the cyclists will hold a climate quiz in the town they stop in, with the aim of meeting people across the country, hearing their views on the climate crisis and discovering how communities are coming together to curb emissions.

One of the cyclists, boat builder Udo Kleinitz from Brighton, said: “The tour is a way for me to express my passion about planet earth. Our children will ask us what we have done to prevent catastrophic changes to life on earth.

“COP will be pivotal and while the outcomes are unclear, we want to raise awareness along the route, show ways to achieve lower emissions (hence the cycle), and show world leaders that there is a crowd of people watching them.”

The cyclists are also hoping to raise funds along the way for the charity Practical Action - a charity working to develop transferable skills and technologies to help communities that need them most to combat climate change.

Charity campaigns officer Sophie Gordon said: “I feel it’s important to come together in Glasgow during the COP26 summit to show the weight of public support for strong international action to tackle the climate and nature crisis.

“By cycling 500 miles across the country to get there, we aim to use the journey to highlight that we have the solutions we need and communities across the UK are already putting them into practice - but we need to urgently scale it up.”

The UN Climate Change Conference will take place in Glasgow from October 31, with leaders from across the world attending to commit to tackling carbon emissions.

Cyclists are stopping at Staines, Milton Keynes, Loughborough, Rotherham, Hawes, Carlisle, and Moffat, before arriving on Glasgow on November 1.

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