Why would I want to cycle down every street in Ipswich – and why for the EACH Treehouse Appeal?

To answer the second question first, shortly after the election, I was invited to attend the announcement by EACH that they had reached their £0.5m milestone. The photocall was at the new site and at the same time I was given a quick tour. Although I had been aware of the Treehouse Appeal, this was my first introduction to the team working to raise the funds, headed by Melanie Chew, who charms to convince. They are a hyperactive lot, these EACH fundraisers, and I was impressed by the way that they had engaged so many different Suffolk communities to help raise the funds EACH needs. So I told Melanie that I wanted to help, and would get back to her with a plan.

I had had a vague notion of cycling around the whole of Ipswich for some time, as although I have walked down every road and street in Ipswich – in some cases many times – I had not cycled much through the town. So the two ideas came together – and once we started discussing a cycle ride with my team and with EACH, things fell pretty quickly into place. The challenge was simple: I would attempt to cycle down every street in the constituency.

The first task was to work out how far the whole ride was. This turned out to be one of those questions that seems easier to answer than is actually the case. Other than sitting down and measuring a route, which is very laborious, there is no way that you can measure the roads in the town. So we took the Borough's list of roads, added them together, and added 20%: there are a lot of closes you need to travel down twice, and of course there will inevitably be some double-backing. After all that, we reckon that the challenge would be over 300 miles – although what distance we will only know at the end.

At first I wanted to do the whole thing over consecutive days but a few people close to me tried to persuade me otherwise, concerned that I would collapse half way through! In the end the diary sealed it – I just did not have five days on the run between September and Christmas. So we decided to tackle a portion every Sunday, over the course of a month.

At every Treehouse fundraising event, we are always told how cramped the conditions are at the current hospice. I had always had the nagging suspicion that this was usual hyperbole from charities trying to raise money. I have to say that having visited the bungalow that provides the accommodation now, EACH were not exaggerating. The Walker Close site is a standard bungalow, so crammed with equipment that staff are falling over each other to move around. Sofas double as beds; the staff change in the guest loo; the kitchen – which feeds dozens – would hardly be enough for most families of four.

The real problem, however, is this. EACH hospices look after very sick children often for many years, providing respite to parents and advanced facilities to stimulate trapped minds. Almost all of these lives will at some point come to an end before the child reaches adulthood. So when this happens, many parents prefer to be in the hospice, surrounded by many happy memories from years of care and also proper palliative nursing care on hand. The trouble is, if a child for end of life treatment at the hospice, the space is so small that the building must be closed to all other visitors. And that means that the in-house respite and therapeutic work has to stop.

Give that the hospice is looking after eight families at any one time, this is clearly far from ideal situation. Frankly, it's a miracle that they have managed for the last ten years.

At the end of the tour I met up with Nik Joplin, who is on secondment from BT to EACH, and who is also helping to plan the challenge. He reveals that he is going to come with me on every leg, which is a great relief – as I now have company!

In no way am I prepared. Apart from being embarrassingly unfit, I do not have the right kit. The last serious cycling I did was when I was writing my book on the Black Death, a few years ago, when I cycled around north Suffolk to get away from my desk.

But this was pretty amateur stuff. I need a decent bike, and Thomas's Cycle Revolution, on the junction of the Foxhall Road and Heath Road, have lent me a bike. I went today for the fitting and took the opportunity to "invest" in a hideous Lycra outfit and a new helmet. I look like Big Daddy on a diet.

Practice makes perfect, so today we attempted a trial to see if our distance and time calculations are correct. We decide to tackle Sprites, which is one of the smaller wards but has a few hills, and so in the sun set out from the shops on Hawthorn Drive. Nik is there – and is a keen cyclist, so knows what he's doing. We are being led by Alex Oldman, who heads up Cycle Ipswich and has devised the route-finding system, which is very sophisticated: laminated maps, taped to the handlebars, with each ward divided into four sections.

I have to say that Alex and Nik looked far more professional than me, and to my amazement, Alex was proposing to pull a trailer with his two children all the way! He did suggest that he might have to drop away at some point (if children got bored, cold,... too heavy!) - but in fact, Alex stayed the course with ease and his two little ones slept through the whole thing, snug with a blanket over their laps.

To all of our surprise, we completed Sprites in an hour and fifteen minutes, covering over 12 miles. The mapping system worked very well and the GPS that Alex has loaned me has successfully laid a "breadcrumb" trail of where we have been. The plan is to upload to this website the maps generated by the GPS each week so that my actual progress around Ipswich can be viewed. I am aware that some might not believe that I have actually cycled down every street in Ipswich, so I am keen to prove that it has been actually been done!

Having completed the trial cycle ride (albeit in the smallest ward in terms of distance), I am feeling a little more confident. Most of the rides however will be at least four times this length - but it is a challenge I am looking forward to and a project for which I will be very proud to have done my bit.

On Mark Murphy's show this morning, to launch the challenge – "Ben on a Bike". Tacky, I know, but at least it's catchy. From today we will be leafleting the whole of Ipswich so that those who do not read the Star or the EADT know what's going on. EACH have been amazing how they've got so many people involved, so it would be good to allow Ipswich people to "own" this project as much as is possible – as it will be in their town.

Ah ha – the day before, and nerves are kicking in! Spend the morning delivering leaflets: a very nice man in Hamilton Road gives me £10 and wishes me good luck – a good omen I think. In the afternoon I help out at the Barnado's shop in Ravenswood: the ladies don't believe me when I tell them what I am about to do.

We arrive at Walker Close in good time. We want to start the challenge at the current hospice and end it at the new site. Nik's there, as is my brother Felix, who is very kindly joining me for the day, and my mate Rob Brown, who lives in Ravenswood. I do an interview on BBC Radio Suffolk with Rob Dunger and then set out.

All I can say is that Ransome's Europark is bloody big. Ravenswood is as labyrinthine as ever, and Cliff Quay in the dark is a forlorn place, with the ghosts of old factories still haunting Trinity and Unity Streets. Landseer Road is a good hill climb: you can really imagine how it must have been decades ago when people cycled down here and Bishop's Hill in their thousands to work, and then had to make the journey back home after a hard day's graft.

Cycled past the beautiful oak tree in Lely Road, in the middle of the Gainsborough Estate - and enjoyed the view from Sandy Hill Lane. This is one of my favourite parts of Ipswich.

My office in the House of Commons is on the third floor of an office block a little way from the Palace of Westminster. I stride over from Westminster tube station and jog up the stairs, as I normally do, except that my legs vanish half way up. The result of 70 miles on a bike after too little exercise for some years!

It is very cold on Sunday morning, which only serves to increase my embarrassment at being late for the little group that has collected by my office in IP City: I left all my map gubbins at home. We set off, and immediately it starts raining. This is a problem - not only because it takes the edge off my brakes but because the indelible pen I use to mark off the roads we have covered will not mark in the wet. So I spend some seconds every time we stop rubbing the plastic map against my thigh, which causes some funny looks from one passer-by.

The west bank of the river, entirely in Bridge Ward, is a fascinating place. The old, huge, Ransome's Rapier's site is almost completely redeveloped - IP City centre joined by flats and houses, the final phase of which has just been re-started, which is a good sign. Then Wherstead Road, whose northern end is now freed of traffic after the road was driven round the side. On the old drag there are half-timbered buildings which saw far more trade even hundreds of years ago than they do now. The terraces that climb the hill - as do we - around Austin and Vernon streets are a quiet corner of the town, with a mixed community of many old-timers side-by-side with newcomers. The whole area is bisected by the railway line, and we take the cycle path that runs between the embankment and the Maidenhall allotments.

I bore for Britain on trees: I love them. And there are some very fine ones on the Maidenhall Estate. One question for people who know this area longer than I do - there is an estate on the other side of the town, in Rushmere, built roughly at the same time, which everyone calls the Scottish Estate, on account of the names of its roads. Many of the roads in Maidenhall are named after Welsh towns - but why is this then not called the Welsh Estate?

I have heard one reason why we have a piece of Halifax here in Ipswich. It is not Halifax, Yorks., but Halifax, Nova Scotia, from where whalers came to unload their sad cargo, to be cut up and brewed into blubber oil. The lamps round the docks were powered, thereby, not on coal gas but on the fat of whales.

Stoke Park has a lot of hills! On the subject of road names, someone chose abbeys as the source for the streets and closes around here. Yet there is no pattern - some Augustinian, some Benedictine, all from all over the country. I wonder whether some Borough officer several decades ago was a keen church crawler, and just chose his favourite ruins.

A nice lady stops us in Tintern Close, gives me a donation and wishes me luck. Thank you!

It is getting dark by the time we tackle Sprites, which is the shortest ward to complete we have attempted by far. We finish at the newly refurbished, and incredibly friendly, Kingfisher Pub in Hawthorn Drive. Nik tells me it is 54 miles today. Not so far, but there are more hills on this side of the town, so it feels much as it had done a week before. My brother, who manfully finished the first weekend on a heavy mountain bike, thereby proving his fitness to us all, this week had a more suitable mount - so finished in even better cheer.

I get a call from BBC Radio Suffolk at 0840 on Sunday morning, asking me whether I am cycling today: the weekly chat with Rob Dunger has become a feature of my Sunday mornings now! But today I am not cycling, as I will be a the War Memorial in Christchurch Park, for the Remembrance Day service.

Donations reach over £2,500 - so we are over half way to our £5k target!

Gipping, Westgate and St Margaret's today: the west, north-west and north of the town. Having had a good run so far over two weekends, things - at last - go wrong. Frankly, I was surprised that it had not happened so far. Two punctures did not stop us completing Gipping before lunch, cooked by my wonderful sister at home in Dillwyn Street West. We then tackled Westgate - at the end of which, on the short trot up Berners Street, it suddenly felt like someone had stabbed me in my right knee.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to announce, was my first sports injury ever.

We carried on, but it was dark by the time we started St Margaret's, and having nearly collided with ourselves in the unlit tracks west of Christchurch Park, and Paul having suffered a puncture - our third of the day - I decided that we were being told something and called it a day. Frankly, no matter how much energy I had left, my knee was seriously hurting. We retired to the Greyhound, where I self-medicated on some new spiced winter Adnams.

Observations: the view from so many streets in Chantry, overlooking Gippeswyk Park, is really magnificent. You don't notice it so much when you're knocking on doors - but I was reminded what a nice part of the town this is. Norwich Road was amazingly busy, considering it was a Sunday: I want to go back to the Jamaican Snack Bar, when I get time. And finally, the towpath behind Bramford Road is so nice - and what the rest of the river could be from the lock on Handford Road to the Wet Dock, if only we could make the effort. The (very good) new houses just being finished just before the railway line will give a really good view of the Gipping, and one day - no doubt - Hadleigh Road Industrial Estate will return the complement.

Decided to finish St Margaret's - east of Christchurch Park - today, before receiving the Duchess of Cornwall at the hospital. I dosed up with ibuprofen this morning, which staves off knee pain until I try to sprint up Hervey Street, when it returns. Anyway, 17 more miles today, to add to the 55-odd we did on Sunday. That's Gipping, Westgate and St Margaret's now done. And the sun came out at the end, which made the Old Cemetery even more beautiful, with its old yews and cedars between leafless trees. Stopped for a moment by the First World War plot.