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- 2 in 5 people will be diagnosed with cancer before the age of 85. - We all know how it feels to have a friend or family member affected by cancer, as well as the priceless feeling of the support we received during this time. - I have decided to quit my job and ride 8,000km from ‘South to North of the Southern Hemisphere’ to raise money for Canteen. ABOUT CANTEEN: I am fundraising to ensure all young Aussies impacted by cancer continue to receive the support they need during this difficult and isolating time. Whether dealing with their own diagnosis, a close family member’s cancer, or the death of a loved one; with your help, Canteen will be in their corner. Cancer affects everyone differently. That’s why Canteen provides a wide range of free support services including social connection events and programs, free counselling, 24/7 online support for young people and parents, access to free resources and specialist support for young cancer patients. One of my best friends I met from doing my Master of Teaching lost his mum due to cancer when he was a teenager. However, Canteen provided him with some of the hope and resources he needed not only to cope, but eventually grow from his loss. This friend is now a school counsellor, supporting the people in his community to be the best version of themselves professionally and personally with his own friends and family. Please give anything you can to this beautiful charity: https://www.raiseit.org.au/fundraisers/davidantell/raise-it Thank you in advance for your generosity, it means a lot!

Love thy neighbour & love thy nature: Wild camping & Warmshowers It starts with a willingness to be flexible and making sacrifices on life’s comforts for the adventure. Of course, if you have the budget and inclination, you could stay at hotels, Airbnb’s & other paid accommodation for your trip. But this could add up pretty quickly for the average person’s budget on an extended trip. This is where wild camping and the website Warmshowers comes in. Wild camping is where you set up camp overnight in a secluded location for free. Warmshowers is a community website where complete strangers host each other (I often explain it like ‘it’s similar to Airbnb, but for free’)! This blog is just a breakdown of my own experiences of the two methods.   Love thy nature: Wild camping The premise for this is simple: you set up a tent and sleep for free in the wild. The image at the top of this blog will be the focus of this discussion on wild camping, as this was my set up back in 2018 when I rode around northern Europe for 3 months (you can read more about that trip here ). As you can see, the word picturesque hardly does it justice. But guess what? This campsite in Denmark was completely FREE. It was a government park which had signs at the entrance stating people could only stay for 1 night before having to move on while ‘leaving no trace’. What made it even better, is that only 500m away was a public toilet. That is one of the key parts ‘leave no trace’, meaning no litter or waste is left behind; thus, the area should look as if no one was ever there when you leave. ‘ Wikicamps.com.au ’ has an extensive database of designated locations to camp around Australia. There is nothing quite like sleeping out in the wild. However, it’s not all fun and games. While camping around Europe, there were a number of times I was woken up by wild animals rummaging around my tent, flooded out in a thunderstorm, or woken up in a fright with shotguns going off in the middle of the night from people hunting. Let’s just say, I didn’t have sweet dreams those nights.   Love thy neighbour: Warmshowers As mentioned at the start, the basic premise of Warmshowers is fellow bikers hosting each other for free through the platform, and the example I always give is ‘it’s like Airbnb but for free’. I joined Warmshowers in 2018 after it was recommended by a fellow bike touring enthusiast I met while teaching English in South Korea. While I was skeptical at first, mostly due to the trials and tribulations I experienced on Couchsurfing; it turned out to be a conduit for some of the most meaningful encounters I had on my trip around Europe. Being hosted by and hosting complete strangers is a truly beautiful experience. There really is something extremely special and altruistic about being hosted by complete strangers, particularly in a world that can often seem more divisive and selfish. The last person I hosted on Warmshowers was a German guy called Sebastian, before he continued on his journey to Perth via the infamous Nullarbor. We had brilliant chats about touring, travel adventures, and bicycle pannier set-up options. Here is a link to the page if you want to read more or join the community: https://www.warmshowers.org/   For my 6-month trip from ‘South to North of the Southern Hemisphere’, these will be my two main forms of ‘accommodation’. I hope this now clarifies how I will ‘live on a bike’ as far as accommodation goes. The next blog post will discuss the contentious topic of MONEY, and how I budget for extend trips.

Even I ask myself, ‘how did I end up in this scenario?’ Well, I guess it all starts when I was growing up in the idyllic countryside of Dorset in the UK. The main way to get around in the middle of nowhere before you turned 17 was by bike. I never really grew out of this lifestyle and have travelled by bicycle for work and pleasure ever since. I swear its kept me physically and mentally alive! While living in South Korea as an English teacher, a colleague of mine told me about a bike path going across the whole country – from Seoul to Busan known as the ‘4 Rivers Bike Path’. This really caught my imagination, and I was desperate to try it. Over a 4-day holiday I rode with another teacher along the trail. What an adventure and sense of achievement. I mean, we’d crossed a whole country in 4 days. What else could we do…? After teaching in Korea for 5 years, it was time for another challenge, in addition to also trying to gain Permanent Residency in Australia before I become too old (30+). This was a dream of mine since visiting Aus as a teenager. Between visas, I complete my biggest bike tour yet: 73 days and 5,926 km around Northern Europe. Here is a poster summary of the trip and the video blog I took on the way: :

·       We all know somebody who has been affect by mental health struggles, cancer or the changing environment. ·       I am planning on cycling around 8,000km for this trip. Therefore, if you donate $10 per 1,000km, this would be $80 in total. ·       Even the smallest donation can make a difference to many lives. I have got the ball rolling, by giving $100 to each of the three charities I have chosen.   Please choose from the three charities below to give a donation:   -          Black Dog Institute – Mental Health https://www.teamblackdog.org.au/fundraisers/DavidAntell/corporatepartners   -          Canteen – Supporting young people affected by Cancer https://www.raiseit.org.au/fundraisers/davidantell/raise-it   -          Australian Conservation Foundation - Protecting, promoting and restoring Australian wilderness https://fundraise.acf.org.au/david-antell   THANK YOU 😊