Riding across the world to raise awareness

David Wren has made a 24,000km trip to raise money for Spark of Life a dementia treatment that made a massive difference in his mother’s life.

During his journey which has taken him from his family’s home of Athboy in Ireland across the breadth of Europe and Asia and outback Australia, Mr Wren has raised $10,000 most of which has come since arriving back in Australia.

“The trip has effectively taken five years,” he said.

“The common question I have gotten is what the hell are you doing.”

During the trip, Mr Wren said the reaction he got in some of the foreign countries was interesting.

“The most friendly people I think I ran into were in Iran,” he said.

“They would stop by the side of the road and offer cucumbers or water because of the heat.

It wasn’t just the heat Mr Wren faced during his trip, the weather in Western China was at the other end of the scale.

“The coldest it got was to minus six degrees and that was the top for the day,” he said.

“That was the only time I physically felt unsafe. Not for the reason of getting attacked by anybody or getting run over it was just the isolation.

“I caught a train for some of the trip because it was just too cold and too isolated and later found out about a week later was the record blizzard for the area.”

This is not the first trip Mr Wren has been on only what he felt was a natural next step.

“My first ride was North to South in Vietnam,” he said.

“The went 4000km down the Pan America Highway in South America so I have done some small trips if you can call 4000km that.”

“This was just a natural progression of a big committed and challenging ride.”