You guys may already know but I take my mum on a lot of wild trips. If you know my story, I wont bore you with the details. But single mother, tough times, but my mum always supported me. Now my life has turned around, it’s a blessing to be able to show her the world. Then, she got diagnosed with sh*tty Parkinson’s Disease. But rather than sitting back defeated, we used it as a catalyst to do more stuff. And that morphed into a few charity trips to raise money to find a cure for the disease.

• I put together a trip and my mum climbed Mount Fuji at 70 years old, along with an awesome group, where we also raised $20k for a cure.
• And then 18 months ago, we tackled the Serengeti Marathon, and my mum completed the 10km there, along side another brilliant group. Another $20k raised.

So here we are in 2023. My mum is another 2 years older, and unfortunately, the Parkinson’s has had another 2 years of effects. But we don’t let that beat us. So we put our heads together to think of our next fund raiser. Mountains are out (“if I climb as much as a bloody set of stairs again Johnny, I’ll murder you!” or something along those lines after Mount Fuji, hahaha). Running is out after the Serengeti. So that left us with boats or bikes. So bikes it is! This time a 100km cycle, across 2 days, from Petra to Wadi Rum.

Haha, the million dollar question! First of all, there are no ebikes in Jordan! They class them as scooters and require a license, so scratch that. It was the first thing my mum asked me!

Before I go on, just remember, I designed this with my 74yo mum in mind. So if she can do it, any of you guys can!

Ok, so it a normal bikes. But a good one. It’s not a ‘road bike’ (those are the skinny bikes, with skinny tyres that they use on the Tour De France), but it’s not quite a big chunky mountain bike either. Somewhere between the two. It’s comfortable, and it’s designed for exactly the kind of thing we’re doing.

PEDALS: The pedals aren’t ‘clip-in’ pedals. Just normal pedals.

SURFACE: Some paved, some off-road, some dirt. But not super challenging, don’t worry.

UPHILL/DOWNHILL: BOTH! But nothing crazy steep, and overall we start higher and finish lower. So not too bad.

CAN YOU SKIP THE CYCLE? If you fundraise the $500 or more, then yes you can sign up and skip the cycle. Also, if you get injured before the trip, or even during the trip, or if you get tired, you can sit out sections by hopping in the support vehicles. Don’t worry. The trip is a challenge, but equally we want everyone to have a good time. I know some of you follow me while I’m off running 200km ultra marathons or trying to climb Everest etc. This is not one of those trips, I promise (although admittedly it might feel like that for my mum!).

SUPPORT? We have spare parts, an mechanic, spare tyres etc. Any problems, we have you covered!

NOTE: My mum and I will be riding a tandem bike. I bought one here in Thailand, and I'm going to bring it with me in my luggage on the flight to Jordan. It may get frozen in customs, so we may end up on the normal bikes, but we hope not! Everyone else's bike is a standard, single bike. If you too would like a tandem, please message me but you'll have to bring it yourself from your home country, they aren't available in Jordan.

Long story short, the dream is $20kUSD (which is about 16k GBP for my UK folk). But I have set the target at a more humble $10,000 (8,250GBP) so it’s not so daunting for us all!

The Cause

Very simply, the goal is donate to find a cure for Parkinson’s. The specific organisation that we are partnered with is Cure Parkinsons (https://cureparkinsons.org.uk). I’ll add the link to here, and I’ll send it privately to everyone who signs up, and then we can all try our best to hit the personal $500 per person fund raising goal! Thanks folks!