When cyclists meet tomorrow they will be making a journey one of their brethren failed to complete.

Talented scientist Mark Brummell had been cycling home, when he was hit and killed by a car driver who failed to give way at crossroads in the New Forest.

It is thought he was making for his favourite pub, the Turf Cutters at East Boldre, when he was hit by a Renault Megane at Ipley crossroads.

Now, to mark a year since the popular university lecturer died, a cycle ride will be held to the pub where a hearty toast will be made to a life cut short.

The poignant event tomorrow is nearly one year to the day that 53-year-old Dr Brummell set out on his ride.

More cyclists were hurt on this area’s roads in 2011 than anywhere outside London, the latest figures show.

A total of 816 riders were injured, up from 690 the previous year – and higher than every other police force area apart from the capital.

Nationally, in 2011, 92 per cent of cyclists killed and seriously injured occurred in accidents involving another vehicle, usually a car.

The ‘Brummell Bummel’ will be raising money for the national CTC Road Justice campaign and the Cyclists Defence Fund, which fights for cyclists’ rights.

Dr Brummell was a brilliant physicist and mathematician accredited with developing the now ubiquitous LED light.

He studied physics at Oxford University where he continued post-graduate studies until moving to the south in the late 1980s to lecture.

He had many passions in life and became an expert authority in everything that interested him. But the passion most people know him for was bicycles.

The annual Brummell Bummel takes its unusual name from Jerome K Jerome’s novel Three Men on the Bummel.

He wrote; “A ‘Bummel’ I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.”

View the cycle route from Wellington Arms, Freemantle, to Turf Cutters, East Boldre