London to Everest

Since the age of 15, I have always enjoyed motorcycles. I started out in the 1970s on a Honda SS50, aged 16. Journeys were rarely more than 30 miles, but (perhaps with some rose-tinted hindsight) I enjoyed every minute of it. There will have been wet, windy and freezing trips in sleet and snow – we lived in Scotland after all – but my recollections are more of the joy and the sense of achievement rather than the hardships.

Some 42 years after first venturing out on my SS50, I am sitting on my BMW GS1200 at the Ace Cafe in London, alongside 19 other adventure motorcyclists, and we're about to ride to Mount Everest. That's 10,000 miles, through 19 countries, in two-and-a-half months. I'm doing it for a very special reason.

One person that shaped my life more than I could have imagined was our second son, Tom. He had Down’s Syndrome, and died in 2004 aged seven, in Great Ormond Street Hospital. Since then I have taken on a different challenge each year, raising funds for the Down’s Syndrome Association and Woolgrove School, a special needs academy. I've also embarked on