To Budapest by bike – just like his grandfather

Published on Monday 13 April 2009 19:29

MORE than 63,000 Scots suffer from dementia, a degenerative disease that results in the destruction of brain cells, causing severe memory loss and distressing changes in a person's personality or behaviour.

Robin Hiley's grandmother suffered from the most common form of the condition – Alzheimer's disease, an ailment that kills brain cells via a build-up of a particular protein. "My grandpa cared for my grandmother, who had bad Alzheimer's, for the last ten years of his life," Robin explains "And the family witnessed how this degenerative disease could completely take over."

He says the last memories of his grandfather were of a tired old man, obviously worn out by the effort of caring for a dementia patient 24 hours a day. Henry Hiley died in 2007, and, inspired by the loving commitment his grandfather had shown in nursing his wife, Robin decided to raise funds for Alzheimer Scotland by, literally, getting on his bike.

The young music graduate from North Berwick, East Lothian, will board a ferry from Hull tonight as part of his marathon cycle from Edinburgh to Budapest.

The particular route he has chosen, which will see him disembark in Rotterdam and wheel across continental Europe, largely following the Danube, is also thanks to the influence of his grandfather. In 1938, Henry Hiley, then a university student studying modern languages, spent a summer holiday cycling to the Hungarian capital from his home in Littleborough, near Rochdale, first following the Rhine and then the Danube.

"I am on a gap year and I can take two months out to do something," Robin says, explaining why he chose to do the trip. "My grandpa did it earlier in his life – he cycled all the way to Budapest, pretty much on the route I am going to take. He did it on his first summer of university and he wrote for his local paper – the Rochdale Observer. I got hold of his articles and thought 'Wow, this could be a brilliant thing and maybe I could raise some money for Alzheimer's'. I got in touch with Alzheimer Scotland and they were really keen."

With Germany under National Socialism at the time, Henry Hiley's missives home are fascinating historical documents in their own right, chronicling an innocent trawl across a continental Europe barely 12 months away from a devastating war. His musings on German youth hostels, billiards and Swedish travellers on tandems stand in stark contrast to encounters with the Hitler Youth and a naive praise of the resourcefulness of a country in the thrall of nationalistic fervour.

"Germany," Henry wrote, "a land left poor by war and inflation, is fighting its way back to prosperity by making use of every available national resource. Wasteland is being reclaimed; land which no-one would dream could bear fruit is being ploughed to give forth good wheat and potatoes.

"Germany has no longer any unemployed, and I myself feel absolutely sure that if England would tackle her unemployment problem with the skill and ingenuity of the present German government, she could rid her towns of their unemployed men."

Later, he spent some time in the university town of Tbingen and was astonished by the activity in a beer tent at a local festival. "Never have I seen so much beer at once, and never have I seen any drink so rapidly disappear," he wrote. More soberly, as he reached Vienna, a city he described as "humdrum", Henry noted with disappointment "signs of a still active persecution of the unfortunate Jews".

With enough historical reference points for him to aim for, Robin's trip is scheduled for six weeks. Although based on his grandfather's route, his itinerary is not fixed, allowing him, he hopes, to provide a similar missive home – in the form of an online blog.

Robin explains that he knew something of the trip before reading his grandfather's articles, having done a section of the route in a previous holiday with his father.

"It is such a great way to see a country," he says. "You see the cities, but you also see everything in between."

He admits to a little nervousness about going alone. "I did look around for a partner, and I have a friend that might come and do a bit with me, but…" he tails off.

Robin, who plays in Edinburgh band the Simple Touch, has already cycled down the coast to Newcastle, and is due to reach Hull to take his bike aboard the ferry to Rotterdam tonight. Later, he will pick up the Danube and follow that to Stuttgart, then on to Tbingen to parallel his grandfather's experience. Then it is along to the Danube's mouth, through cities such as Heidelberg and Mannheim, cycling 50 miles a day on a bike supplied by Law Cycles in North Berwick.

In another echo of his grandfather's trip, youth hostels will be his home, although he will take a tent and rely on some friendly hospitality along the way from the couchsurfing.com website, an online resource of people willing to put up travellers. "It's a bit like Facebook," Robin explains. "People offer a bed or a (tent] pitch, or dinner, in a network and you offer the same back. I'll try and find a roof over my head as much as possible."

And with a language teacher as a mother, his grasp of German is such that he is confident enough to order lunch.

Moira Lawrance, head of fundraising events at Alzheimer Scotland, is full of praise for the young man's endeavours. "Robin's trip is truly inspirational and all of us in the fundraising team are really looking forward to reading all about his adventures as he cycles across Europe," she says. "Fundraising is incredibly important to us and brave souls such as Robin make a huge difference to lives of people with dementia and their carers across Scotland."

&#149 To follow Robin's progress or sponsor him, see http://edinburghtobudapest.spaces.live.com

&#149 www.alzscot.org.