Llangollen teens start year-long cycle to Thailand

Three teenagers have decided to cycle from Wales to Thailand to visit their friend and raise money for charity.

Dyfan Hughes, 17, James Thomas, 18, and Louis Dennis, 18, have never ridden a bike further than the shop near their homes in Llangollen, Denbighshire.

But over the next year they will be cycling through 19 countries to meet up with their friend who moved to Thailand six months ago after his dad died.

One of the biggest challenges, James said, will be going through Kazakhstan because “you could go 50 from 150 kilometres (31 to 93 miles) there without seeing a town or anything”.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales Breakfast on Friday, James said they were on day 21 of their adventure and had made it to Germany.

“Yesterday I punctured my bike, actually, and none of us have had to fix that before, but we kind of came together and figured it out, and it was great.

“Everything’s all right now with the bikes, we haven’t had many difficulties with the bikes yet.”

He said the three of them went on a four-week course where Drosi Bikes shop taught them “most stuff that’ll happen to our bike and how to fix it, which helped a lot”.

“We’ve hardly ridden a bike before. We bought our bikes around two months ago, and we’ve just gone for it.”

The teens said they were doing the journey to raise money for the British Heart Foundation and have gained 25,000 followers on Instagram and 87,700 followers on TikTok.

“We’re excited for everything. Get more experience as the days go on, we’ve learned a lot in these three weeks,” James said.

“There’s definitely a few countries we can’t go through because of wars, because of some of their laws,” he said. “It took like two or three months of planning.

“We had a time range where we had to leave because we didn’t want it to be winter going through Europe.

“We planned it out so that we can get to Kazakhstan for April, because then the weather is not too cold.”

The 18-year-old said they were “confident that we’re going to make it”.