Helen and Mike will embark on a cycle challenge around the world in April 2017.

HELEN CLARKSON and Mike Langridge met on a dating app and soon found they had much more in common than they could ever have imagined. On their first date they found they both had a long-held dream to cycle around the world and it wasn’t long before they were putting their heads together to plan such a challenge.

The pair had both suffered from depression in the past so it made sense for them to choose the mental health charity Mind to raise money for. You can donate through their website www.evereast.co.uk.

Helen and Mike took the time to talk to us about the route they will take as well as the training they are putting themselves through to prepare for the challenge. Read on to find out their biggest fears and what they are most looking forward to once they embark on the journey.

Tell us how you and Mike met and when and why you started planning your cycle trip around the world?

We met in the spirit of modern romance, on a certain dating app in the bleak Scottish winter when neither of us was looking for a relationship or to completely fall in love but you can’t help who you meet. In our personal lives things were a little bleak too. We had both had our own private difficulties and found in each other a similar soul.

We decided to plan the trip together ludicrously early once we found out that cycling round the world was a mutual dream on our first date, and started planning on the second. It was perhaps only a few of weeks after that it turned into a firm reality.

Things have been brilliant so far, not just in relation to planning the trip, but we’re both confident that we can support each other through the duration and beyond.

Why? Because it’s what we want to do with our lives. Neither of us want to solely live for earning money to pay the bills. You’ve got to strive for more.

The pair are currently training for their cycle challenge around the world which will see them raise money for mental health charity Mind.

What made you choose the charity Mind to raise money for and how can our readers get behind you and donate to the cause?

We have both been depressed, and both know how difficult it is and how difficult it is for people even to begin to understand what depression is like. Mind does a great job of relieving the stigma and we want to support it. We think that it’s really important that people are able to talk about mental ill health as the isolation brought about by the taboo often makes things even worse for the sufferer.

We have a JustGiving page for donations to Mind which can be accessed easily via our website (www.evereast.co.uk).

Helen pictured on her cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

What’s the rough plan for the route of the trip and how long do you expect it to take?

The route has already changed since we first started planning. It’ll keep changing as we go, too. We begin in Glasgow and cycle down to Newcastle to take a ferry over to the Netherlands. We then ride through Germany, Denmark and Sweden before crossing the Baltic sea by ferry to Finland. Next we cycle and all the way back down eastern Europe before heading to Turkey and crossing the Bosporus.

We will cross the very top coast of Turkey, into Georgia and Azerbaijan and take another ferry across the Caspian Sea. We go east across the northern Stans and over the Pamir Mountains and into China, then on to Indonesia via Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia.

Next, we travel to Perth to cross Australia, and then ride the length of New Zealand. The next leg sees us cycle from Los Angeles to near the Canadian border before crossing the Unites States. Lastly, we will be cycling home again from Lisbon with a twisty route through as much of the rest of Europe we have time and money for.

What are you most looking forward to about the trip and what are you most worried about?

Helen: I can’t wait to see parts of the world which I have no concept of – namely the Stans and remote China. Places you rarely see on TV documentaries and are less commonly visited by tourists. I have terrible arachnophobia so the spiders in Australia, classically, will be my biggest fear. Other than running out of water, but we can prepare for that.

Mike: Similarly to Helen, I’m most looking forward to the places that will be complete unknowns. I kind of insisted that we travel over the Pamir Highway so I have to say that too! My biggest worry is visa issues entering China (we are planning on entering through Xianjing, which is, like Tibet, a semi autonomous region that can be problematic to travel in). That and toilets. I’m terrified of dirty toilets.

Mike pictured on one of his training cycle rides.

What do you think the pros and cons of spending so much time together will be?

War and peace.

What are your biggest fears about sleeping out in the wild? Are you prepared for many nights sleeping on the hard ground of the floor with just canvass for protection?

So beyond the spiders, we both love wild camping and do it as often as we can in Scotland, though dangerous wildlife here is rare. Encountering bears is a concern, and so are raccoons because they are pretty destructive creatures.

Scotland has wonderful open access laws, but they aren’t replicated world over. Falling foul of some unknown rule is a bit of a worry. We bought a dark green tent just for the opportunity to stealth camp when we can. We’re also taking a bivvi so we can be super stealthy when it’s called for, and so some nights we can sleep right under the stars.

The other major worry is the kit failing but we tried to buy things that are built to last.

Helen celebrates on completing a Land’s End to John O’Groats cycle ride.

How hard are you currently training and how supportive have the people around you been?

We were both fairly fit to begin with, but the huge amount of planning we need to do has taken a toll on that, as has the fact that Mike badly injured his knee at the start of summer has meant that we have not spent as much time on the bikes as usual.

We are back in full training mode now though, cycling as often as possible including to work and taking the bikes and kit for test rides at the weekends when we can. We’ve teamed up with British Military Fitness and attend their classes two to three times a week. They are brutal! But that’s exactly what we need to get us into shape (not just cycling shape). We both really enjoy going.

Our families tend to keep their concerns to themselves and that’s quite nice because they wouldn’t be able to talk us out of it anyway. When they see how much effort we are putting in, how thorough we are with our planning that does seem to alleviate some of their concerns.

Neither of us are from affluent backgrounds and neither of us had much in the way of savings so the fact that companies are getting behind us and the cause is invaluable. FINDRA, the fantastic female specific clothing brand, is backing Helen, and CycleHackis supporting our cause of overcoming the boundaries we have faced with planning. Everyone we speak to, including our current sponsors, really understand the value of positive mental health through exercise which is something we really want to promote through giving talks in schools and public spaces on our way around the world.

For the most part, other people around us have been very supportive. We tend to get two responses from people who we speak to about it. The first is one of excitement and enthusiasm and it’s by the far the most common. The second is the question “are you mad?” which is slightly ironic given the charity we’re raising money for. Once we explain to those people how much the cause means to us and how much we enjoy cycling we can quickly turn them around, even if most of them wouldn’t want to do it themselves. Something everyone has in common is that they all want to follow our progress.

Scotland has offered a good variety of terrain for the couple to train on.

Tell us about plans to update everyone through blogs and vlogs whilst you’re out on the challenge and where will we be able to view your content?

Since the beginning Helen wanted to make a record of what we were going to undertake, since she recorded her LEJOG (Land’s End to John O’Groats) cycle in September 2015 and considers it an invaluable way of remembering the trip. We decided to start vlogging and blogging since the very beginning as soon as we got our website up and running. We did consider not having much online presence and going via our own personal social media to advertise the charity, but we found that having a name for the trip and a bigger social presence was much easier so we could keep everything in one place. So we have started a few videos documenting our adventures in Scotland, and our ways of keeping our expenditure down to save as much as possible which includes delicious but affordable meal ideas, on our YouTube channel, and writing blogs on the ups and downs on preparing for such a big trip. We will be updating the YouTube channel, Twitter and Facebook accounts the entire way around the world when we have access to phone data and wifi so we can interact with as many people as possible and keep everyone tuned into our monumental struggles and our epic triumphs. It’s only an adventure if it’s difficult. It’s a holiday otherwise.