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ANNA JONES: Now, this year’s Tour de France will set off from Yorkshire in just under a month’s time but as things stand the riders will set off without Britain’s Sir Bradley Wiggins.  I am joined now by Bradley’s former teammate, Mark Cavendish and he is in Blackheath in South East London today for the Hero’s Ride which is a charity ride to raise money for Help for Heroes.  Mark Cavendish, thank you very much for talking to us.  First of all tell us a little bit about this ride that you’re involved with today.

MARK CAVENDISH: Well this is the Hero Ride, it is the last part of a collection of rides up and down the country.  I rode in from Croydon with a group that did the Big Battlefield Bike Ride from Brussels to Paris over a few days just throughout the week but there are other rides coming down from Edinburgh, from Cardiff, from Manchester and some people just doing it on their own to support the charity but there are just over a thousand people here on Blackheath and we’re all going to ride in the centre of London in a bit and finish on the Cenotaph and all wearing T-shirts, you’ll see I’m wearing yellow, that’s the yellow part of it, the Help for Heroes medal and to see the riders and looking at the medal it will be pretty spectacular actually.

AJ: Fantastic, it sounds like a really special event.  Turning to another special event, the Tour de France, tell us a little bit about your ambitions this year. 

MARK CAVENDISH: Yeah, I’ve always got ambitions at the Tour de France so I get back training after I’ve been here today, it’ll be a nice ten mile ride and it’s a great charity here and what Help For Heroes do for our soldiers, our wounded is pretty spectacular and we are raising a lot of money.  If anybody else wants to raise they can text to 70977, text Ride and that donates £5 and it’s for an incredible cause, you’ve got some brilliant people here and what the servicemen and women do for this country is pretty phenomenal. 

AJ: It does sound absolutely phenomenal.  I’m sorry to take you back to the Tour de France again but I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit about what you hope to achieve this time round, how many stages you aim to try to win?

MARK CAVENDISH: I like to try to win as many as possible at the Tour de France, it’s the biggest race for me in the year and I’ve been training hard and we’ll see what happens in four weeks. 

AJ: Do you have ambitions to win the green jersey again this year?

MARK CAVENDISH: For sure, the green jersey is the goal at the end and that will come from winning stages so if I concentrate on winning stages that may come at the end of it. 

AJ: We’ve heard this week that Sir Bradley Wiggins won’t be part of the Tour de France Sky Team, how much will that team miss him do you think?

MARK CAVENDISH: I don't know, I ride for Omega Pharma Quickstep and I’m looking forward to riding the Tour for them, I’ll leave what happens at Sky to the directors there.  Brad’s a good friend of mine and I’m sure the Tour will miss him  but yeah.

AJ: Looking ahead to another event, to take you on from the Tour de France to the Commonwealth Games, how important is that for you?

MARK CAVENDISH: The Commonwealth Games is great because I represent the Isle of Man, I know you are trying deflect the topic but right now I’m here in Blackheath and Help For Heroes but I think that is quite a spectacular event at the minute right now.  

AJ: It is a spectacular event.  Tell us  a little bit about some of the people you’ve met who are taking part there today.

MARK CAVENDISH: There are some guys here, one of them is Josh Boggi who is a triple amputee, Josh has got into cycling and he actually went to train with Team Sky in Majorca earlier in the year but he has rode a hand bike, he has got one hand and I’ve tried using one of these hand bikes and they are so hard to ride, even using both hands but Josh has got one hand and has gone from Brussels to Paris, it’s phenomenal.  Everyone has got a smile on their face.  My wife Pia has been doing the ride as well and she’s been having a cracking time, the riders are all looked after and yeah, we’ve had fun riding in from Croydon this morning.

AJ: It looks like you have a fabulous day for it, what kind of reception have you had on the route, on your way there?

MARK CAVENDISH: We were on the same ride from Blackheath last year and it is incredible, can you imagine a load of cyclists going into the centre of London, I thought it was going to cause chaos but the amount of people that stopped even on the other side of the road, they were getting out their cars and cheering on both our wounded soldiers and the people supporting this charity, it was pretty phenomenal, I’ve never seen anything like it.  It was incredible and I couldn’t wait to do it again this year.  

AJ: It’s a fantastic cause and it looks like a great event, great weather for it, Mark Cavendish thank you very much indeed for telling us all about it.