Aaron Gordon: There And Back Again| 3 min read

Aaron Gordon, a former intern of the Teach & Travel China program, made a life changing decision upon completing a volunteer project. His road so far had taken him through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia and Italy, to read about the first part of his journey click here.

His road to Paris was a long and magical one and riding North, eating and drinking his way through wine country, it was all made the more mystical by heavy fog and followed by the customary picture of the Eiffel Tower.

However, it was the return to the British Isles where things got much more difficult. Initially though there was calm before the very real storm, stopping for Fish and Chips in Brighton and riding through Jane Austen country to Stonehenge things were fairly simple for Aaron.

In actual fact, things were becoming quite wonderful, on his ride through the Welsh valleys he experienced charity of the nicest kind. ‘A bar man thrusted five pounds toward me, telling me to give it to any charity I wanted to!’ Aaron explains, ‘I tried telling him I’m not really raising money as such, but he insisted, I was very quickly falling for Wales.’ Unbelievably, the very next morning in a little hamlet called Canon Pyon, a shop owner gave him a free Mars bar, just for cycling, and then after a quick chat, ANOTHER FIVE POUNDS!

However, it was cycling in Kendal, close to England’s Lake District that things got rough for Aaron. ‘Slush was gathering between my pedals and clogging all the mechanisms of the bike, but still I pushed on. I climbed an incredibly steep hill and then I felt the full force of the infamous Shap Pass. The wind came screaming from the left at 70mph, knocking me off my bike into the now blizzard rated snow.’

But then, the unlikeliest of vehicles would come to Aaron’s rescue, a milk tanker! ‘I thought that even if he could take me, it might be impossible to take the bike’ he explained ‘The tanker pulled in and I opened the door. It almost flew off its hinges as the wind caught it. I explained my situation to Eddie, the driver, and he was kind enough to help me.’

Reaching Carlisle, Aaron encountered Maxim Laithwaite, otherwise known as the Peace Day Pilgrim. Laithwaite walked from Londonderry through all five capitals of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England to raise awareness of the Peace One day Campaign and the International day of Peace. He did it all without any money. The two adventurers walked Hadrian’s Wall together.

‘Some people say that you don’t really know something until you teach it, and so I found out as I delivered a lesson on Northern Irish culture, whilst working my school in Inner Mongolia.’ It was now time to go home and Aaron would be greeted by a huge crowd, true hospitality.

As he arrived, a cheer went up and he hugged his Mum and Dad followed by meeting his Grandmother again, ‘Look at that bloody beard!’ she exclaimed.

While I can write about this and you can read, Aaron has memories that will last a lifetime spurred on by confidence he got from an initial jump into the unknown, ‘If I hadn’t gone to China, I would never have flown to Istanbul and cycled home on my own, it set the stage for all the consequent adventures I have been on’.