What do you do when you reach the age of 60, book a luxury cruise, and work on your gardening skills?
When we first met our clients Lawrence and Linda, they gave us their brief which wasn’t to maximise their income, but to maximise their time!
A few years on and they are now two months into a seven-month motorcycle trip from Sydney back home to North Wales to raise money for charity.
They will have covered 25,000 miles and ridden through 25 countries when they return in September. They are riding with two good friends, Richard and Jude who emigrated to Australia from North Wales in 2003. Lawrence and Linda have known Richard since their school days aged 12.
They received lots of help and advice from biking groups around the world and were in no doubt about the challenges they were going to face along the way, from: avoiding riding after dark across the Nullarbor Plain in Australia because of the ‘vehicle seeking’ kangaroos, to the heat and humidity in South East Asia and altitude sickness when they reach 5200m nearing Everest Base Camp on day 13 in China!
The team of four are supporting 2 good causes, one in the UK and one in Australia. Mental Health Motorbike in the UK use a shared love of motorbikes to help raise awareness of depression and suicide prevention. In the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of males under the age of 50.
Lawrence and Linda recently saw a very successful campaign to reach farmers in Wales, to highlight mental health issues and believe a more targeted approach can help these typically hard groups to reach. The charity aims to have a Mental Health 1st Aider in every community in the UK.
Lawrence & Linda have signed up to do the Mental Health first aid course themselves in September and hope to have a continuing involvement with the charity afterwards.
With their 3 boys having left home, Lawrence and Linda felt that this was their time. They believe that life will always ‘get in the way’ if you let it and there will always be a good reason not to do something like this. A good friend of theirs has a saying, “you will never be as young as you are now, you will never be as fit as you are now, so if not now, when?”.
Although now retired from their careers, they still run a small holiday business from their home, they also have 6 hens, 2 dogs and a cat to look after. Anyone with pets will know how hard it is to get somebody to look after them for you while you go on holiday, never mind for 6 months! They had used a website called Trusted House Sitters previously and found a lovely couple who agreed to come back to cover the full 7 months this year. Lawrence said, “it does take a lot of trust to allow somebody to effectively take over your life and to look after your house and pets”.
At the time of writing, the team have reached the middle of Thailand, just below Bangkok and are heading North to Laos and then China. They have changed their daily routine to combat the tremendous heat and now have very early starts and very early finishes! They posted their tents and camping equipment onto Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and now take advantage of the relatively cheap, but most importantly, air-conditioned accommodation throughout Asia!
The highlight for the team so far has been the people they have met along the way, with the enthusiasm and kindness they have received. They have been genuinely overwhelmed by offers of accommodation & food and other help through Australia, Indonesia and Thailand. They firmly believe that there is so much kindness out there in the world if you open yourself up to it.
You can follow their journey at www.facebook.com/2upfromdownunder, www.instagram.com/2upfromdownunder www.youtube.com/@2upFromDownUnder and website www.2upfromdownunder.com
Mental Health Motorbike can be found here: www.mhmotorbike.com
We’re so thrilled Lawrence and Linda were willing to share their story, and photos with us and you.