Len Collingwood, a clinical nurse specialist in psychotherapy, retired on his 65th birthday. He had made a deal with his wife, Sally: she would train as a yoga teacher and he would “start out as an adventure cyclist”.
Four months later, he set off on a 13,000km cycle ride from Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia to Edinburgh, much of it roughly shadowing Marco Polo’s Silk Road. No sooner had he started out than a snowstorm hit. He hid in his tent, wearing every item of clothing he had packed. At -18C it was too cold to venture outside to cook. He survived the next 48 hours by eating a “massive bag of Snickers and Crunchies” his colleagues had given him when he retired.
