“To everyone else, it is simply a motorbike,” says Josh Quigley. “But, for me, it’s the car for saving my existence.”
After losing his father to leukemia in 2018, after which slipping into despair, Josh made plans to finish an undertaking he had failed five instances earlier than – to cycle around the world.
But this week, at the same time as stopping to rest in London throughout the primary leg of his trial, his bike became stolen.
The loss, Josh says, was “devastating” – but he has no longer given up hope of continuing his journey.
“I first tried to cycle around the sector in 2016,” he tells the BBC. “This was definitely my adventure to happiness, that’s what I usually referred to like it.”
In 2015, after splitting from his lengthy-term female friend, Josh turned into suffering badly with depression and attempted to take his own existence.
“I crashed my vehicle at approximately 70mph at the motorway near my domestic in Scotland,” he says. “I turned into genuinely lucky to survive.
“After that, I thought: ‘I’m going to do something positive about this.’
“I went to look Sir Chris Hoy speak in Edinburgh and simply felt stimulated to head on a motorcycle.
“At that point, I wasn’t a bicycle owner. I become multiple stone obese, I became consuming alcohol four instances per week – but biking changed into my way of looking to get glad once more.”
Despite traveling greater than 10,000 miles via 14 nations on his remaining trip – Josh, now 26, never reached his goal.
“I assume it is fear that receives the higher of me,” he explains. “If I finish I recognize how huge it will likely be and I think that is what holds me returned.”
Even even though he did no longer whole his preceding journeys, Josh believes visiting on his motorbike saved him – describing the journeys as “lifestyles-converting”.
But after his father’s death final yr, Josh started all over again to battle with existence in Edinburgh.
He decided to try the trip one more time.
“It’s were given me out of a darkish location once earlier than so I turned to it again.”