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Companies which helped me
I would like to express my gratitude to the following companies which provided me with assistance of various sorts.
In particular, I would like to that the owners, managers and staff who took time out of their busy schedules to help me.
The Bike Shed in Exeter were extremely generous with their time and expertise, without the benefit of which I doubt out would have got out of the county, let alone the country. Thanks to owner Mike Sanders, and in particular to the late Richard Mallett, whose incomparable good humour and bikemanship are sorely missed.
Lyon Equipment set me up with some essential kit, not least a set of Ortlieb panniers. The team at Lyon were ever-helpful, both before I set off (thank you especially Dan Middleton), and in times of dire crisis on the road (thank you, Martin Kirton, for your patience in the face of my incompetence.)
P&O Ferries saved me a fair bit of swimming; Brian Rees and his colleagues treated me so well that coming back to England didn't seem quite such a bad idea after all.
The good people at Dazer kitted me out with one of their doggie-zappers; legions of cowering Tibetan mastiffs litter my wake to this day.
Eclipse have kept my website online for over three years now and have to date served up only a smidgin under 1,000,000 hits, bringing the 2wheels website to nearly a quarter of a million visitors. I'm deeply grateful to Luke Skinner and his team.
Decathlon in Shanghai built me a super bike for the return journey, and also gave me an excellent tent and sleeping bag. Sky Lee opened the door, Cyril Perrin was the man with the vision, and the efforts of Michael Zhao and his team in getting the bike together at short notice were little short of heroic. Thank you, all.
Roger Owens, consumate gentleman and MD of Drennan Group in Shanghai, stepped into the logistical breech well beyond the call of duty. If you have a problem, and no-one else can help you, maybe you should call... the D team.
Condor Bikes, hand-in-glove with Marin, were quickest out of the blocks to ship me a new bicycle when Bike Mark I went AWOL at the hands of a Mongolian horseman. Cullen Ward was ferret-like, in the best possible sense, in putting together a package that got me back on the road.
This wouldn't have happened either without the timely assistance of Lightwave Tents and Shimano; the very kind people at DHL iced the cake beautifully by getting the whole lot shipped to me - sitting in a warehouse in London, the kit would have been less dusty but also less useful.
Not a commercial concern, but due my thanks nonetheless, are the British diplomatic posts around the globe who in their various and inimitable ways helped lay out silken sheets along my rocky path. I should particularly thank Leslie Beats and her colleagues in Ulaan Baator for all manner of assistance, and Richard Austen for his support and a Mexican dinner - not bad for the middle of Mongolia. In Hong Kong, Stephen and Elizabeth Bradley and were genial and generous hosts, while Vanessa and her team in the Press Office were like unto a panoply of angels and archangels. Where else in Hong Kong could I have turned to for a haircut, a bottle of champagne, a new outfit and a cheese sandwich?
After failing to trouble Her Majesty's Ambassadors Plenipotentiary for some time, I went knocking on that door again in Almaty, where fellow Cambridge geographer Paul Brummell and his team were exceedingly helpful.
Nicholas Chapuis, French ambassador to Mongolia, and his wife Sylvie, picked me up out of somewhere near the gutter in Ulaan Baator in the best spirit of the
entente cordiale, and provided international garaging services to my bicycle for almost a year. To them I am also most grateful.
Carl Wackan at UK Production Services was a lifeline of Snickers bars, off-beat headgear, and rousing emails in dark times. He has my gratitude; I have his chocolate.
And most of all, I am grateful to and touched by the many hundreds of individuals around the world who, by their many thousand acts of kindness, touched my journey and raised my spirits. You have my private thanks.
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