‘I’m 90 for goodness sake’: rainforest activist to pedal 104 miles down Thames

P edalling on water for more than a hundred miles in a heatwave, pushed back by east winds and having to navigate 31 locks would be a challenge for anybody. But when that body is 90 years old, with a bad knee, failing balance and malfunctioning arms and shoulders, it’s a herculean feat. Rainforest campaigner Robin Hanbury-Tenison, 90, is pedalling 104 miles down the River Thames from Oxford to Richmond on a water-bike to raise money for a unique research station which is being built to study Britain’s temperate rainforest. Hanbury-Tenison, the founder of Survival International , who spent much of his younger years raising awareness of the value of tropical rainforests from the Amazon to Borneo, has turned his attention to overlooked temperate rainforest after discovering that his modest Cornish hill farm had an important fragment of the mostly vanished habitat. “I’ve seen what we’ve lost. At my age, if I’m going to do something about it, I’d better get on with it,” said Hanbury-Tenison. Starting on Friday and supported by his son, Merlin, who will ride alongside him, Hanbury-Tenison will navigate a pedal-powered craft that sits on the surface of the water from Magdalen Bridge, Oxford, aiming to finish at Teddington Lock in Richmond on International Rainforest Day on Monday. …