Crossing continents

Bolton businessman reveals the ups and downs of life on a bike as he cycles from the UK to Melbourne to raise money for unpaid carers and deprived children.

It’s almost four months since businessman Andrew Crompton set off from Bolton on a bike ride that will take him all the way through Europe, the Middle East and Asia to the south-easternmost tip of Australia. By the time he crosses the finish line on the banks of the Yarra river in Melbourne he will have cycled 12,500km through 18 countries and 14 time zones. If that sounds difficult enough, he’s also set himself the Herculean task of raising £500,000 from the ride for Carers Trust and Bolton Lads and Girls Club, charities working to support unpaid family carers and young boys and girls from deprived families. Carers Trust caught up with him on a video call from Saudi Arabia to hear how he’s managing to keep body and soul together despite extreme heat, saddle sore, baffling border bureaucracy, being berated by 60 naked Germans and getting lost in his hometown of Bolton 5 minutes after setting off. Andrew is being accompanied on the trip by his long-time friend John Mills (“Millsie”) who is driving a support vehicle along the route.

It's hard not to feel just a little bit sheepish in the comfort of my London living room as Andrew joins our Zoom call from a hotel room late at night in Saudi Arabia. The 57-year-old is sat at an uncomfortable looking desk after finishing yet another gruelling ride across a scorched Saudi landscape. “It’s brutal,” he says as he describes cycling along interminable roads that stretch out into the heat-filled glare of the horizon with gusting head winds.

“What makes it really tough is that you go mile after mile without seeing a tree or a building that can give you some shade,” he replies when I ask him what it’s like cycling under the merciless Arabian sun.

If all that sounds bad enough, Andrew reveals how time on the bike is just one part of the challenge of keeping moving on towards Melbourne. “Sometimes, there’s not a hotel or campsite for miles when you finish for the day. So finding accommodation can be a real challenge.”

A typical day on the road

This is all sounding even more challenging than I’d imagined. I ask him to describe a typical day on the road.

“We’re up at 6.00am every cycling day, packing our bags again before loading up the vehicle with the bikes and bags. We then grab some breakfast and spend some time programming our routes. We try to get me on the bike as early as possible before the heat and glare gets too much but that can be difficult when each day’s ride can last anything from three-and-a-half to five hours. I have to keep on going because there’s so much to get done once I’ve finished the ride. Even after we’ve driven back to where we’re staying for the night we have to wash the cycling gear, strip down the bike, write up the log and find something to eat and then have a think about programming for the next day. Then it’s time to video call the family before getting some sleep and doing the whole thing over again next day.”

I’m definitely feeling sheepish now as I think about the enormity of effort required just to keep going every day through some of the most hostile landscapes on earth. So I decide to change tack and steer conversation towards the high points, low points and the downright absurd of a trip that has already taken him 6,500km across 13 countries in Europe and the Middle East.

“I got lost in Bolton two minutes after setting off!”

If Andrew’s days are now run with military precision, it wasn’t always that way. You’d think the first thing anyone cycling to Australia would remember to bring along with them was their cycling helmet. Apparently not. After forgetting to bring his own, Andrew had to borrow one for the first leg to Leek. And he soon realised that wasn’t going to be the only mishap of the day. Just five minutes into the ride, he found himself lost in the backstreets of his hometown, Bolton. It wasn’t long before he found himself lost again, this time in the picturesque Buckinghamshire village of Wendover. A local man commented that Andrew looked a little lost and asked where he was trying to get to. “Melbourne,” said Andrew. “What? Melbourne, Australia?” asked the old man. “Easy. End of the street, first left.”

If map-reading has improved a little since leaving England, Andrew and Millsie do not seem to have lost the knack of navigating themselves into some comical situations at times. What’s the most bizarre thing they’ve come across on the road, I wonder?

“Well, in Stuttgart I decided that a visit to a local sauna would be just the thing for some aching limbs.” As soon as he hears the word “sauna” I see Millsie twitch. “Well, it seems dress requirements for the sauna are a little more minimal in Germany than in England,” continues Andrew. Walking into the sauna and asking “room for another?” he was met by 60 irate naked men. The men had been taking part in a ritual called Aufguss where the heat and steam slowly builds inside the sauna to create a multi-sensory experience. Andrew was told in no uncertain terms he had walked in five minutes from the end, let the heat out and ruined the entire thing.

In addition to embarrassing situations in German saunas, Andrew has had to cope with aggressive motorists, military jets and helicopters screaming overhead in Belgrade, some rather strange food including fried chicken livers served up in the shape of a cricket ball as well as endless days of boiled eggs and cheese for breakfast while cycling through rural Turkey. This was more than compensated for by a wonderfully impromptu evening of drums and singing, as well as a little raki, that extended well into the night in a local restaurant in Beypazari, Ankara.

“A month in and we realised we’d have to re-think the route and scrap Iran”

It was in Turkey, however, that Andrew and Millsie realised they were going to have to do some quick thinking and plan an alternative route through the Middle East after a groundswell of public protests began to sweep across Iran.

“By the time we got to Istanbul it was clear that trying to travel through Iran was a non-starter – a view quickly confirmed by the Foreign Office as well as our Iranian guides,” says Andrew. “I was gutted. Iran was probably the country I’d been looking forward to most, especially the incredible landscapes we’d have been travelling through.”

The only other land route through the Middle East was via Syria or Iraq which was clearly out of the question so they decided to fly to Kuwait. From there Andrew could get back on his bike for a long ride south through Saudi Arabia alongside the Persian Gulf, passing Bahrain and Qatar (resisting the temptation for an extended break to take in the World Cup) before entering the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the ride down to Dubai via Abu Dhabi. Although a different route, the cycling distance was the same.

But having solved one problem, another quickly presented itself at the Kuwait-Saudi border.

Anyone travelling overland from the UK to Australia will quickly realise that some borders are easier to cross than others. But a comedy of errors involving one guide’s forgotten passport, a car that therefore could not be driven over the border, the need to find and hire another car on the Saudi side, alongside a subsequent mix up of Millsie’s and Andrew’s details on their passports and visas, all contributed to an immigration imbroglio that left Andrew and Millsie stranded for hours under a blazing sun in no man’s land. As if that wasn’t frustration enough, the pill was made even harder to swallow with an unexpected £540 bill to cover the cost of one driver retrieving his forgotten passport and having to hire another. “We’ve had better days on the road,” muttered Andrew.

What’s next?

After a well-earned rest in Dubai, Andrew and Millsie will fly to Mumbai in India. Andrew will then cycle down the west coast to Goa for a Christmas break before cycling on to Chennai in south-east India. From there it’s another flight to Bangkok, a very sweaty ride through the steamy tropics of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before another flight to Cairns on the northern tip of Australia. Andrew will then cycle down the length of Australia’s east coast through Queensland and New South Wales before finally arriving in Melbourne in April 2023.

We’ll be catching up with Andrew and Millsie again after Christmas to hear how they’ve got on crossing India. So be sure to check back here in early January!

The charities supported

All of Andrew’s costs have been self-funded so all money raised from the trip will go straight to work to transform the lives of unpaid family carers and boys and girls from deprived communities.

Bolton Lads and Girls Club is a children and young people’s charity based in Bolton. They provide opportunities to improve the lives of 4,000 active members through universal open-access play, youth and sport provision together with bespoke targeted services, supporting the most vulnerable.

Carers Trust is a major charity that is for, with and about unpaid carers of which there are an estimated 7 million in the UK. With support services at breaking point and the country still coping with the ravages of Covid, carers are at crisis point and need help more than ever.

Both charities are so grateful to Andrew for choosing to take on this mammoth task to raise vital funds for their causes. Andrew is doing a fantastic job fundraising and spreading awareness for both charities.

The epic challenge over 15,500km was completed on 26th March 2023 and raised an incredible amount of charity.

See what happened in the Manchester to Melbourne journey on Facebook or on Instagram.

A photo blog of some of Andrew’s journey