Cyclist's 'eventful end' to UK to Thailand trip

A bikepacker who cycled from Cheshire to Thailand had an "eventful end" to his trip after he broke his collarbone just days before he was due to finish.

Olly Hargreaves, from Poynton, said he braved tiger-infested jungles and fought off giant dogs only to be brought down by a pothole that knocked him off his bike in Nepal.

The 26-year-old spent eight months camping across Europe, Central Asia and the Himalayas, inspired by his father who cycled from the UK to Australia in the 1980s and told him stories of his adventures when he was a child.

Olly, who worked as a product engineer before he began his trip last April, has raised more than £2,000 for Alzheimer's Research UK along the way.

Talking about his father's trip, he said: "Back then there were no mobile phones, there were paper maps and you had travellers cheques, so it was a completely different world.

"Most people weren't travelling around when he was. He went through all sorts of places, like Iran, where very few Westerners would be.

"So as you can imagine, he had some pretty wild stories. I always wanted to do the same thing."

Olly set off on his own adventure in April 2025 with just his bike, tent and camping stove.

He began by cycling across Europe through France, Germany, Austria and Croatia.

He was joined by a friend in Montenegro and the pair cycled to Albania and through Kosovo, North Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.

"We had some wild dog chases in Turkey. On the first day there was a ginormous Kangal dog that went for us.

"They use them as sheep dogs, because they're big enough to scare off wolves," he said.

"They have these big spiky collars so they look menacing and terrifying. Every day there was a dog chase and some of them were really bad and they'd properly go for you."

Olly continued through central Turkey alone before his girlfriend Ellie met him in Cappadocia for a week, and he stayed in a hotel for the first time on the trip.

"I bivvied out a lot in Turkey, in the mosques," he said.

At the time, the border with Azerbaijan was closed, so he caught a flight to Aktau in Kazakhstan and travelled by train into Uzbekistan.

In Augus, he cycled through Afghanistan and arrived earlier than expected to meet his faher in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

"I thought it would be really funny to surprise him at the airport, but when he arrived he didn't even recognise me because I'd not cut my hair or beard since I'd left!" he said.

The pair cycled along the Pamir Highway, travelling together for three weeks - until sadly his dad developed High-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) - where fluid builds up in the lungs, making it difficult to breathe - and had to return home.

Olly then travelled to Kyrgyzstan, where he waited for two friends he had met earlier in the journey.

Together they cycled through Kyrgyzstan up to Almaty, sleeping in tents in freezing temperatures.

"It was really, really cold. It just got to the point where it was starting to be winter and we were getting -5° at night," he said.

"We'd make a big fire so we'd keep a bit warmer, have a couple of beers around it and cook together."

The trio then flew to New Delhi, India, where they were crashed into so often they started keeping a record of the incidents.

"It's a mad country to cycle through," he said.

"We ended up with a tally chart of who'd been crashed into and by what. I got hit by three mopeds and a tuk-tuk while we were there."

From there, they continued through the lowland areas of Nepal, where they had to keep an eye out for tigers, elephants and rhinos.

They made it to Pokhara where they began the Annapurna Circuit - but that was when Olly broke his collarbone.

"My mum was flying out to meet me in Pokhara that day and ended up spending five days with me in hospital," he said.

The pair had been hoping to do some trekking in the mountains, but Olly's injury meant that was no longer possible.

Instead, they did some smaller treks before his mother returned home.

Olly flew on to Bangkok on 1 December to reunite with Ellie, and the couple have since travelled through northern Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

"It feels great to look back on how far I've come, we had a good time despite what happened," he said.

"If something's happened that you can't change, being in a bad mood isn't going to make it better it's only going to worsen your experience so I try and make something good out of it.

"Breaking my collarbone wasn't ideal, but it made for an eventful end to the trip and it probably happened at the best spot in the journey."

Read more stories from Cheshire on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC North West on X. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.