Capes will fly and gold-banded arms will wipe sweat off brows as two Romford pubs put sandal to the pedal in a chariot race across London.

The Fatling in Hornchurch's High Street and the Goose in South Street, Romford, are raising money for Cancer Research UK in hopes to qualify for Stonegate Pub Company's Spartan Chariot Race.

More than 140 pubs in Stonegate's southern region are competing to don Spartan armuour in the five-mile noon race on Thursday, June 20 at the Minories on one of eight 12-person bikes.

Operations director at Stonegate, Colin Hawkins, said: "We've all been touched by cancer in some way in our lives, so we wanted to do our bit to raise money to help stamp out this awful disease."

Each pub is raising money in its own way, with collection buckets inside pubs and donations online for both the Fatling and the Goose.