One-pound bet brings British youths on cycling trip to Taiwan

May 25, 2008, 14:45 GMT

Taipei - A one-pound bet daring one Briton to cycle from London to Taipei prompted two British youths to spend a year cycling to Taiwan raising funds for the British Heart Foundation.

On Sunday, Duncan Hill, 26, and Jonathan Churcher, 22, climbed 91 floors to the observation deck of the Taipei 101, the world's tallest skyscraper, to pop champagne and celebrate the completion of their adventure.

Duncan gave a one-pound coin to Jon, who kissed it, saying he would keep it forever because it has changed his life.

'We have come to realize that if you want to be happy, you must get up and move and make change. After this expedition, we are thinking about moving to Taiwan, to teach English or to do something else,' Duncan said.

Last summer Duncan, an engineer, was chatting to his friend Jon, a London bar owner, and mentioned that they had talked about coming to teach English in Taiwan.

'I bet a pound that you cannot cycle from London to Taipei 101,' Duncan teased, but Jon took up the challenge. So the two friends gave up their jobs and on July 28, 2007 peddled off from London to France.

Cycling during the day and sleeping in a tent at night, they travelled through Europe, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia and arrived at Kaohsiung, south Taiwan, on May 17.

Along the way, they started a website called www.wheellife.co.uk - to share their photos and diary with friends and strangers and to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation.

The trip was hard, but pleasant. In Turkey, they were give two days to join a marathon, and finished the full marathon in seven hours, walking most of the way.

On the beach in Dubai, they had a hard time staying awake as people kept giving them drinks. In Bombay, they played Canadian soccer players in a Bollywood film and had to lose the game to Indian players. They earned the equivalent of 10 US dollars each for the day's work.

Now, having covered 22 countries and 13,376 kilometres and raised 2,000 British Pounds (3,960 dollars), Duncan and Jon are to return to London on May 31 to party with their friends, recuperate from the trip and plan their next adventure.

'We will probably come to Taiwan for a year or two. We don't like cycling, but we like change,' Duncan said.