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... complained Flossie.
Pic of the day
- Thread starter conaero
- Start date
Scaf
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I need to brush up on my geography? I didn’t realise Chepstow was in Wales
zagatoes30
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Neither did Andy until he moved thereI need to brush up on my geography? I didn’t realise Chepstow was in Wales
Andyk
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Feck off.
zagatoes30
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Harry
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Obviously, I missed that episode!
CatmanV2
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zagatoes30
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Quarantine I think
CatmanV2
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Andyk
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I am afraid it is. It has been England, then Wales, then England, then Wales. I would also like to add though I AM NOT WELSH.I need to brush up on my geography? I didn’t realise Chepstow was in Wales
philw696
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You'll be buying an EV next Andy
philw696
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My first wife was Welsh and from the Valleys different again.
One thing for sure Andy is that you are a true Automotive enthusiast with a CV of lots of special cars mate.
philw696
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What a Great story.
Grandfather’s WWI diary inspires homeless man to visit 26,530 war cemeteries
58-year-old Australian Michael ‘Mic’ Whitty is cycling from Auckland to Christchurch as part of a 30-year quest to cycle to every Commonwealth War Grave cemetery in the world before VJ Day 2045. He was in Whanganui last week, staying with Terry Carmody, a friend from their days in the Australian Air Force.
So far so good. But it is Mic’s backstory which makes his quest that much more compelling.
After the Air Force, Mic worked for British Aerospace in Saudi Arabia, earning good money. Returning to Australia he worked in IT until one day it dawned on him, he was already four levels beyond his competence level. “I recognised that I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
He headed off to the UK doing low stress jobs but admits, “I was back on a beer budget but still with champagne tastes.” He got into ‘spread betting’ – where you speculate on whether an asset’s price will rise or fall. On ‘Day One’ he made £4000 (about $8,200 NZ). “However, three years later I had lost £40,000 including my parents’ inheritance.”
He syphoned off money from his employer in the vain hope of using it to recover his losses. Failing to heed the sage advice of “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” it was only a matter of time until his fraud was discovered and his employment came to an end with his reputation shredded.
Because of his actions, Mic became depressed and ended up on the UK Missing Persons List for ten months, sleeping rough in the Welsh countryside. “I would have thought that I would have been the last person who would end up homeless. I had to reconcile my current situation with my previous attitude towards the homeless, which was “stop being lazy, get a job – now it was me sitting on a park bench for weeks at a time. It seemed relentlessly endless, and the worst bit was it would be the same again tomorrow.”
A good friend had stored Mic’s tea chest with letters and memorabilia. Mic decided to look through them and found his grandfather’s war diary from 1916. It was late 2015, and he realised that the next year would be the 100th anniversary – and what better time to go to France and retrace his grandfather’s movements. It was an opportunity to break the cycle.
With the help of friends, he cobbled together the essentials and reinvigorated the confidence levels needed for such an undertaking.
As his grandfather did not reach the Western Front until March, Mic headed off to Gallipoli – by bike and train. A friend had given him a mountain bike, which got him to Turkey and back to France, where it was superseded by an abandoned old French Postman’s bike - Both the bike and Mic are literally on a ‘second wind’ having both ended up on the scrap heap. When on the Gallipoli Peninsula, he picked up a brochure about the Commonwealth War Cemeteries, so he decided to spend his time visiting all 33 of them – on his bike, of course.
Moving to France, Mic soon discovered that his grandfather didn’t move around much; such was the nature of WW1. Instead, he set himself the target of cycling to the approximately 440 war cemeteries between the Belgian coast right through to Switzerland, which constituted the Western Front.
Near the end of 2016, Mic changed the ‘goalposts’ and extended his list of Commonwealth War cemeteries to visit all the WWI ones in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany – some 2000.
He is able to fund himself by doing odd jobs and hosting presentations about his journey. As Terry says, “he had developed a bit of cult following in Germany, a little bit like Forest Gump.”
His default accommodation is a hammock with a rainfly and sleeping bag. He prides himself on stealth camping in discreet places but is sometimes chanced upon by early morning dog-walkers. As he’s packing up, conversations can go either of two ways; “I’m homeless and sleeping rough” or “I’m into the 9th year of a 30-year cycle ride” – both essentially true but perhaps only one is a conversation-stopper.
This year, Mic broke out of Europe with a February flight to Bermuda, then onto the east coast of the States before crossing Canada along the Trans-Canadian Highway. “Cycling with a single-speed across the Rockies and prairies was 8870 km – the distance from Sydney to Perth via Darwin.”
New Year’s Day finds Mic returning to Sydney and after a couple of years of doing at least one loop of Australia, he plans to head to South Africa and back up to Gallipoli before returning to Europe, only to repeat the whole circumnavigation again using a different route. The ultimate goal is to visit all 26,530 Commonwealth War cemeteries as well as any other nation’s War Cemeteries that he passes en-route by VJ Day, 15 August 2045 – by which time he will be 80.
Mic says, “My grandfather’s diary saved his life. There is a bullet hole in the top left-hand corner. It has also saved my life.”
You can check Mic’s progress on www.micwhitty.com and
follow him on Instagram @micwhitty
Grandfather’s WWI diary inspires homeless man to visit 26,530 war cemeteries
58-year-old Australian Michael ‘Mic’ Whitty is cycling from Auckland to Christchurch as part of a 30-year quest to cycle to every Commonwealth War Grave cemetery in the world before VJ Day 2045. He was in Whanganui last week, staying with Terry Carmody, a friend from their days in the Australian Air Force.
So far so good. But it is Mic’s backstory which makes his quest that much more compelling.
After the Air Force, Mic worked for British Aerospace in Saudi Arabia, earning good money. Returning to Australia he worked in IT until one day it dawned on him, he was already four levels beyond his competence level. “I recognised that I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
He headed off to the UK doing low stress jobs but admits, “I was back on a beer budget but still with champagne tastes.” He got into ‘spread betting’ – where you speculate on whether an asset’s price will rise or fall. On ‘Day One’ he made £4000 (about $8,200 NZ). “However, three years later I had lost £40,000 including my parents’ inheritance.”
He syphoned off money from his employer in the vain hope of using it to recover his losses. Failing to heed the sage advice of “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” it was only a matter of time until his fraud was discovered and his employment came to an end with his reputation shredded.
Because of his actions, Mic became depressed and ended up on the UK Missing Persons List for ten months, sleeping rough in the Welsh countryside. “I would have thought that I would have been the last person who would end up homeless. I had to reconcile my current situation with my previous attitude towards the homeless, which was “stop being lazy, get a job – now it was me sitting on a park bench for weeks at a time. It seemed relentlessly endless, and the worst bit was it would be the same again tomorrow.”
A good friend had stored Mic’s tea chest with letters and memorabilia. Mic decided to look through them and found his grandfather’s war diary from 1916. It was late 2015, and he realised that the next year would be the 100th anniversary – and what better time to go to France and retrace his grandfather’s movements. It was an opportunity to break the cycle.
With the help of friends, he cobbled together the essentials and reinvigorated the confidence levels needed for such an undertaking.
As his grandfather did not reach the Western Front until March, Mic headed off to Gallipoli – by bike and train. A friend had given him a mountain bike, which got him to Turkey and back to France, where it was superseded by an abandoned old French Postman’s bike - Both the bike and Mic are literally on a ‘second wind’ having both ended up on the scrap heap. When on the Gallipoli Peninsula, he picked up a brochure about the Commonwealth War Cemeteries, so he decided to spend his time visiting all 33 of them – on his bike, of course.
Moving to France, Mic soon discovered that his grandfather didn’t move around much; such was the nature of WW1. Instead, he set himself the target of cycling to the approximately 440 war cemeteries between the Belgian coast right through to Switzerland, which constituted the Western Front.
Near the end of 2016, Mic changed the ‘goalposts’ and extended his list of Commonwealth War cemeteries to visit all the WWI ones in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany – some 2000.
He is able to fund himself by doing odd jobs and hosting presentations about his journey. As Terry says, “he had developed a bit of cult following in Germany, a little bit like Forest Gump.”
His default accommodation is a hammock with a rainfly and sleeping bag. He prides himself on stealth camping in discreet places but is sometimes chanced upon by early morning dog-walkers. As he’s packing up, conversations can go either of two ways; “I’m homeless and sleeping rough” or “I’m into the 9th year of a 30-year cycle ride” – both essentially true but perhaps only one is a conversation-stopper.
This year, Mic broke out of Europe with a February flight to Bermuda, then onto the east coast of the States before crossing Canada along the Trans-Canadian Highway. “Cycling with a single-speed across the Rockies and prairies was 8870 km – the distance from Sydney to Perth via Darwin.”
New Year’s Day finds Mic returning to Sydney and after a couple of years of doing at least one loop of Australia, he plans to head to South Africa and back up to Gallipoli before returning to Europe, only to repeat the whole circumnavigation again using a different route. The ultimate goal is to visit all 26,530 Commonwealth War cemeteries as well as any other nation’s War Cemeteries that he passes en-route by VJ Day, 15 August 2045 – by which time he will be 80.
Mic says, “My grandfather’s diary saved his life. There is a bullet hole in the top left-hand corner. It has also saved my life.”
You can check Mic’s progress on www.micwhitty.com and
follow him on Instagram @micwhitty