Claire Davies

0:04Hello and welcome to The Midpoint. My guest today is a remarkable woman. You might never have heard of her but when I learned what she's done and intends to do over the next few years I felt her story might resonate with a few of you who might have itchy feet those needing some inspiration or just a sign it's time to do something a bit different. Clay Davis adventure has been documented in her book called Braver Than You Think cycling from Land's End to John O 'Groats but she hasn't just done that as you'll learn. So how did a former speech writer and diplomat end up jacking it all in to cycle the length of the country and then hopefully the length of every country in Europe and what has she learned that might help all of us let's find out

0:52Claire Davis welcome to the midpoint thank you so much for having me so my interest in you was was piqued when I realised the scale of the kind of swing, if you like, from a life in the diplomatic core and being around that world and speech writing to just drop it and then decide to pretty much cycle the world, start off cycling Great Britain. I thought, well, there's got to be some kind of story here. What happened there? But obviously, the period of life that you're in is very much the midpoint and the changes that were going on in your life that led to that. for other people it might not be such a dramatic move they might be interested to know you know how you get the bravery I suppose to make that change but take us back to to the kind of moment when you saw enough yeah I mean it was a midlife moment I think um I'd I really loved my job and I'd you know I had as you say I've been in the foreign office for a long time although I'd had a period of unpaid leave in the middle um so it wasn't a sort of uninterrupted 30-year career but um um i'd really enjoyed it but it just suddenly something changed and in my early 50s and i think um you know looking back it was clearly the menopause but i didn't realize at the time that anxiety was a symptom of the menopause um you know how many years ago are we talking here um this is four years ago so i was sort of 53 and um you know i i'd always coped well with pressure and suddenly I wasn't and I was finding it really difficult to manage and feeling very anxious and overwhelmed and so.

2:32But didn't at all equate that to the midpoint? I didn't I mean I knew all sorts of other symptoms that you could have but anxiety just wasn't one that I was aware of and it seems ridiculous now because there's so much more talked about it and that's definitely one of the ones that people mention but at the time it just it just didn't occur to me and actually because I was surrounded by this is early 2021 um there was a lot to be anxious about then there was a lot to be anxious about and the foreign office was under a lot of pressure we'd just merged with um the department of international development um you know we're still in mid covid really um and a lot of my colleagues were under a lot more stress actually And so I just didn't feel I had, you know, I had the right in a way to to complain or mention it to anyone.

3:22So do you mind telling us how the anxiety was kind of manifesting itself and what it felt like? I just felt overwhelmed and sort of, you know, panicky actually at times. And and that's not something that I'd ever experienced before. and it sort of came to head one Friday night when I was sort of having, I felt like I was in a sandwich of pressure from above and below and something just overwhelmed me and I found myself sobbing and I'd never cried at work before and I just called a colleague and dumped the problem on his lap and logged off and I'd never done that before and I just thought I don't know what's happening but I can't keep going like this.

4:05and I wasn't enjoying it anymore. So it took me a while to actually extricate myself from work for various other commitments and colleagues, commitments and things. So it took a few months to do that. But eventually I left in July 2021. I went on a sabbatical, which was very fortunate to have that opportunity.

4:32and I don't think I have, I didn't have a plan to cycle up the country. It wasn't something that I'd always wanted to do, you know. It wasn't on my bucket list. It's not, you know, I actually thought... How much of a cyclist were you? Well, I did cycle. I enjoyed cycling. And we'd done a few short tours, you know, with my family. So we'd done a charity ride to Norfolk for the lifeboat. And, you know, so we'd done a bit of it, but I'd never done anything on this scale. and nothing on my own before um and so yeah I genuinely up until that point Land's End's John and Groats was something I just thought other people did you know crazy people masochists generally um and uh much fitter people than me you know it just hadn't occurred to me um so I honestly don't know where it came from but I suddenly started saying to people that's what I was going to do and then and then the more I said it the more I realized I had to do it because otherwise they'd think I was just...

5:28So these people were loved ones around you? Well, actually, it turns out when I discussed this with my husband a few weeks ago, I don't think I actually mentioned it to him at all. I don't think he knew about it until it was pretty much a plan in my mind. So I'd mentioned it to colleagues when they were asking me what I was going to do for my sabbatical. And yeah, I'm not sure I actually discussed it with John at all, which is unfortunate. But when he heard about it, he was very supportive. When he heard it on the grapevine that his wife was going to disappear for months and ends. Yeah, you're doing what?

6:03Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it's just one of those things that it just got stuck in my mind. I think at the time, you know, for the few months between my sort of kind of moment in the office and leaving, I just had this recurring dream of an open road. You know, it's a bit like the front cover of my book, actually. um it's um you know an open road no traffic um hedges on either side just going off into the distance and just this sense of filling my lungs with air and uh feeling like feeling yeah and um so I think that's what drew me to it uh but also there's this sense that you know I was 53 I felt my body was letting me down bits were kind of cranky and falling off and I was putting on weight and all that and I thought you know I want a physical challenge I sort of craved a physical challenge that would really um test my body um and and it also seemed like the perfect antithesis to all the COVID lockdowns and things um yeah so I think that's why it got stuck in my head and and that's the that's the plan I chose so once you are on your way you've decided to do this you I don't know how easy it is to plan a trip from Land's End to John O 'Groats in terms of who you have to tell do you have to tell anybody do you have to call I don't know the police do you have to tell the fire brigade no um no I mean obviously there's loads of resources out there so it's a very well trodden path although having said that there are a multitude of different ways to do it you can go in any different directions and you weren't looking to break records no i think maybe the longest and the slowest is the record were you looking for the the easiest roads or the safest roads i think i was looking for quiet roads um you know some sort of sense of calm and peace and just that's how you found the route yeah i mean i i i use mostly the sustrans route um which uses the National Cycle Network.

8:14And that is the longest route you can choose, as it turns out. I didn't realise that at the time. And how many kilometres or miles is that? So it's about 1 ,200 miles. You can do it much quicker. So there's, I think, if you want to take a very direct route and, you know, you could even take A roads. People have broken records. Yeah. I think have done 874 miles, I think. You can do it. um and then you know there are lots of companies that offer organized rides between sort of nine and 14 days um and they often take slightly shorter route as well um but i yeah i i was looking for a quiet route and um that's what the sustrans route offered so that's the one i picked plus a few you know diversions but totally on your own you didn't have some kind of support vehicle like we see these charity bike rides there was no support vehicle there was no the kind of peloton no none of that in fact I think I really wanted to do it on my own as well I mean I I planned it at such short notice that there wasn't any time to uh to gather anyone to go with me and in any case I was taking a month so so what your stuff is in your is in my panniers which are about sort of yay high um that in itself is quite liberating isn't it very I love that I I mean, I always have loved travelling light.

9:34I'm not good. No room for a hairdryer. So I enjoyed that. Although I would say that it would have been a good idea to practice a bit on my bike with the panniers on it before I set off. Because it turns out it's a bit heavier and it felt quite different. And I didn't do that until literally the day I set off, which probably I wouldn't recommend. So the first day was a little bit dodgy, was it? Yeah, it was. Fall off? No, I didn't fall off, but it was it was quite uh yeah did you have cleats do you have cleats on yes so i have my my cleats the sort that sort of buried in the in the shoe so they're not like those ones that you know that tour de france people use um they're more sort of mountain bike cleats so you can walk in your shoes and you still have the metal bit stuck in the inside um so yeah no i mean preparation time was limited and um but you're going to get fit on this journey so i thought yes yes Yes, that was a theory.

10:31And in fact, I mean, I did, obviously, but it wasn't quite as I expected. I think I thought after a week I'd be feeling fitter. You look like Victoria Pendleton, kind of cycling down the country. Yeah, it wasn't quite like that. Not least because I also wasn't eating enough. I hadn't realised that you really needed to eat quite a lot more and different things. And so I just spent the entire time in a state of total fatigue. so did you not learn along the way that perhaps you should be actually by about scotland i figured out that i actually say something about was it a bag of maltesers or bag of minstrels yeah so yeah mini chocolate mini buttons i got over exmoor a bag of chocolate mini mini buttons so that wasn't ideal um and i subsequently i mean obviously i've done lots of tours since and i've you know i now very much have the plan that before i leave where i've spent the night I have bought food for the day and I'm carrying it with me but I don't know it just didn't occur to me so I'd set off into the middle of nowhere and I don't know what my expectation was that some cafe would magically emerge from from behind a bush but it never did and then I would be you know sort of get to four o 'clock in the afternoon and I'd had a piece of toast and a bag of buttons and you know funnily enough I was quite tired yeah so along the way um there's there's all sorts you talk about kind of being bolder braver and younger um which i thought was an interesting way to describe your journey what it what it did to you so let's talk about the kind of people you met and and how they contributed to the the new you that came through this metamorphosis yeah i think the interesting thing about traveling alone and one of the things i love about traveling alone is that you do it opens you to meet people you know i think even if you have one other person with you, you immediately become a sort of hermetically closed unit and people that you might have otherwise engaged with just assume that you are together, you're sorted, you know, you've got your own company, you're fine.

12:37Or equally, they don't want to intrude in your time together. Whereas I found that if you're on your own, you are, you know, you've made yourself a bit vulnerable um and people are often intrigued i found british people in particular really quite nosy it's lovely whereas in france they're a bit more sort of you know reticent to ask what you're doing in the uk i found people where are you off to then um and so those sort of little um glancing interactions with people were uh were enjoyable um and i find that you know again when you arrive somewhere by bike you are you're meeting people at their level um you know there's nothing as as um unthreatening as a as a middle-aged woman on a bike really um so a they're not worried about you b they're actually quite curious about you um and so so that tends to open up possibilities to talk to people which is lovely i had some lovely chit chats with people along the way and and also people are very kind um you know i think people are generally hardwired to help you um and you know i had these found these guardian angels on the way and i certainly found them subsequently in my rides in europe um in times where i've come into difficulties there's somehow somebody always appears at the right moment it's quite extraordinary give us an example of one of those and you've talked you've you've dipped into your european adventures because at the end of this you know this wasn't going to be the end and you've now set yourself the challenge of cycling every country in Europe that's the plan I mean every country in Europe from end to end if I can I mean I'll you know it's a nice big list so whether I get to the end of it I'll see but it's nice to have that project um yeah I mean you know in terms of difficulties I've come across um like just this year in Switzerland um I was cycling along and came to a road clothes sign And it was the end of a long day.

14:42I'd already done a couple of diversions. I didn't want to do another one. So I just thought, I'm sure it'd be fine. Just keep going. So I ignored the sign, kept going and got to a bit where basically the psychopath was washed away. There'd been stormed the night before. There was a river where the psychopath should be. And then it continued to the side. and there was it was about a meter drop down to what looked like very fast running very wet water and I thought what am I going to do and I was just standing there looking and I hadn't seen a soul for hours I'd been out in the middle of nowhere for hours and hours and what should happen I turn around a boy arrives on his bike a teenager turns up so not only did he arrive at the right time he'd also ignored the sign and cycled through it and so we were standing there looking at this thing did he speak english no we had no we had no common language at all um but we somehow understood each other um so i would speak to him in english she would speak to me and i don't know what it was actually german romanche it might have been romanche actually um because i could understand none of it um but somehow we understood each other and we had this conversation where i was going I'm not getting across there and he's going yes you are no no I'm not yes you are how old was he I'd say he was about 19 um and so we we saw this uh there was a little slope of kind of gravel down towards the water and he had a big old mountain bike so he just kind of took one look and then went down and whooshed across the water and up the other side and I'm like and he was on a mountain bike he was on a mountain bike I didn't have luggage on this occasion but I just had my bike but still I thought well I'm not getting across there you know and um so now he was on that side and I'm on this side and then his friends his friend goes over and they're both on that side and I'm on this side and I'm like don't go away don't leave me so another boy's appeared another but his friend appeared and um so so then it's sort of come on come on you can do it and I'm like no I really I really don't think I can uh so he's encouraging me so I sort of slither down this gravel bank and you know I get to the water and he's gesturing me for your cycling through water well not yet but that's the end yeah so it's quite a broad section of water and uh so he's gesturing me for the bike so I push the bike across you know sort of he grabs the front and I'm holding on to the last bit of the of the back of the bike so now he's got my bike and he's on the other side of the water and I'm on this side of the water and I'm thinking well obviously the only way to do this is just to walk across and I'm going to get my feet wet um and the next thing I know he's grabbed a stone and he's lobbed this stone perfectly into the middle of the water where it sits proud of the water and he's telling me tread on step on the stone step on the stone and I just walk across well and I get the other side and I've got my feet dry I've got my bike I'm on my way.

17:40How did you thank him? Well, I mean, they peddled off as teenagers do, like, bye. And I thought, well, I'm not going to have a chance. And then by chance, we went a different way up the valley. And then I came across him again about half an hour later. And I was able to ask him his name and thank him and everything. And, you know, it was just lovely. And you've had plenty of those kind of chance encounters. So many. um I mean the only time I had a real problem in the Land's End ride my gear cable broke and there was just no way I could fix it on my own um it was a Sunday there was no bike shops open and I was I was in a I'd arrived in a town um but I say I couldn't find anywhere to fix it um and and I just thought I just have to ask somebody so and I saw this cyclist coming towards me and I flagged him down and you know lo and behold it was a man who worked for the local bike ability scheme he had a toolbox on the back of his bike he knew what to do to fix a gear cable that was broken honestly I mean you can't make it up totally that's incredible um and the lovely thing the sort of um postscript to that story is that um in the process of promoting or sort of selling my book if you like I've contacted bookshops up and down the route um and the place where this happened was in Nantwich and I contacted the Nantwich bookshop small shout out to them and um and said if you happen to know this person um you know it would be lovely if you could put put us in touch and um so I have been in touch with Mr Roberts Gareth Roberts and um and and we've exchanged emails and it's just so nice to be able to thank him properly because he didn't have that time that chance at the time when you take a you know a sabbatical and this is your early plan is to do this did you intend to go back to work yes yeah I did um this was intended to be a um just an interlude and I had thought that I'd spend my time peddling north thinking great thoughts about my career and how I was what I was going to do next and and all of that because your career was very important to you to me yes I mean it wasn't I wouldn't say I was no but it was it was it was integral to you and yes yes exactly um yes it was and I thought that I would go back to it I had really enjoyed particularly the speech writing side of of uh of it um who were you writing speeches for?

20:16So for foreign office ministers, not the Secretary of State, but the junior ministers, of which I think I totted up, we had 24 in my four year stint. A turbulent time. Yeah, so that was interesting, because there was always somebody with a different style and different priorities and what have you to write for. So that was a really interesting time. time um uh but then i everything had changed with covid so uh i'd ended up doing a different different sort of role um so you thought you'd go back so i thought i would go back you know i thought it was time to do something different i wouldn't stay with what i was doing all the time um and so i thought i'd spend my time while i was cycling thinking about that and in fact what happened was that I spent much more time just with an empty head or and that was wonderful actually um you know you're out there in solitude and in nature and it's incredibly mindful experience cycling really because you are thinking constantly oh god it's another hill oh it's a downhill or you know what's happening here and is my my rooting device got me lost again and all of that.

21:36And so while that's going on, you haven't got much time to think of great thoughts actually. So I, but what did happen was I got to the end of the journey and just, and realised it had transported me to a different place sort of mentally.

22:00and you know it I was so detached from my normal reality and I didn't really want to go back to that immediately at all I really resisted it John will testify I was quite aggressively independent for a while and so my main thought finishing it was I just want to do more of this and so I had a bit longer of my sabbatical so the next thing I did was plan another cycle trip which took me a thousand miles around France and Switzerland in the course of which I had to make the decision whether I was going to go back to the foreign office and that found me in a train station somewhere in France and I with my bike and I thought you know what actually I think this is what I want to do so yeah but then a practical kind of question because a lot of people will be thinking gosh this sounds like an incredible adventure and I'd like to do something similar but there's the bills to pay that kind of thing so how are you kind of totting all that up yeah I mean I recognise I'm in an incredibly privileged position to be able to make that choice so it effectively taken early retirement and yeah that's that's how that works out but I am very lucky to have that have that choice and I spend my time writing and cycling and planning my next adventure.

23:38So this is now your life writing and cycling is your life now yeah Yeah. And honestly, you always were a writer. You're a words person. Yes. So writing a book about your adventure was probably a very natural process for you, was it? Yeah. I mean, the book grew out of a blog that I wrote on the trip. So the blog was very much a sort of a travelogue. And also, because of the time I was doing it, it was in, you know, October 21, September October um I was conscious that the people that were reading it um were still many people were still very much sort of in the COVID world and quite constrained and um so it was very much an upbeat blog I didn't I didn't go into the difficulties that I was having and how hard it was um so that came when I when I decided to you know write a book this is the warts and all this is the What's an all?

24:39The blog was a little bit more uplifting, I think, was the plan. That was the intention. But even if you have the security been able to retire earlier than you might have been thinking, I think the title of the book is quite important. Braver than you think, because you have to be very brave to get off the treadmill. and going back to what we were talking about before for so many people your career is so entwined with your identity let alone your lifestyle and you know the thing everything that you do and operate within Definitely, I mean I'd experienced that before when I took quite a long career break to be a stay-at-home mum and I discovered then really the extent to which your identity is wrapped up in your work and the way people perceive you is wrapped up in your work as well.

25:34And it's the first question people often ask, isn't it? What do you do? And I've consciously started asking people a different question. What is it? How do you spend your time? Yeah, that's kind of, what do you do with your days? Yeah, because, you know, because A, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's fair to define people by their paid work. and also you probably get, maybe they don't want to talk about the work, you get a more interesting answer if you say how do you spend your time. But I think it sort of told me things about our societal attitudes I think as well towards caring and looking after children and things and the relative merits of that in terms of how people see it in sort of status as it were.

26:29So I think that was quite an interesting experience for me to have had that already in the middle of my career. And then to go back to work afterwards, after quite a long break, was probably a much braver thing to do than cycling up the country, to be very honest with you. I mean, that was, you know, after a long break, it's um it's quite it's very daunting to go back into the office again um and you you imposter syndrome is so immense um so but you know you so you already had a few pairs of big girl pants is what you said you kind of you'd done something that had challenged you actually uh to an extent that you'd found out a lot about your fiber you're what you were made of your resilience and yes and I think it's incredibly sort of satisfying and rewarding when you do put yourself through that sort of uh you know pressure but in terms of you were talking about the how uh the the move obviously back to work was braver almost than cycling kind of up the length of the country but in terms of your understanding of yourself and what makes you tick work wasn't the thing i think i mean it can be if it's the right work um i i mean i absolutely loved the speech writing work that i did because i found it incredibly absorbing and you're creating and crafting something uh that is you know unique and it's come out of your between your ears it's nobody else has thought of it um so so there's that it was a very autonomous uh work as well so I enjoyed that so it's very much it's sort of similar in a way to what I do now which is you know writing most I more likely write fiction now once I've now finished this book um oh really so and yeah so I have many unfinished novels and and a few finished short stories um and I find that very absorbing and uh it takes you somewhere different you know hours pass while you're doing that and while continuing to cycle so the novel will just be an interlude to yeah yeah yeah not you don't cycle on the road you don't stop in the evenings and well and then can't possibly have a laptop no i can't do that two two different things um yeah no i mean i think i think when you do um when you're not in paid employment um and you're not caring um you know so if you're in a sort of retired state if i don't like the word retirement but anyway if you're not in paid employment um you're a freelancer yeah okay you're a freelance cyclist and a freelance writer okay thank you i'll try that um then i think you need you know you need physical and mental challenge you need purpose and you need social interaction um and i get all of those through uh you know through writing through cycling with friends through planning my next trip and that's the sort of mission purpose if you like the long-term purpose do people treat you differently well I think so I I think I don't know whether it's people like to have a hook to hang you on you know it's a bit like a job isn't it oh you're a accountant or you're a dentist or you're a whatever oh you cycle countries from end to end that seems to be my identity now and the funny thing is that you know you finish one and people go so what's the next one you think can I just enjoy the last one um so yeah i think that is and younger tell me about how you felt younger was that physically feeling younger because you were in such good shape partly i mean partly physically but also um you know you you get you grow in confidence and that grows out of the physical side but it's it sort of plays into the mental side as well because as you see yourself achieving things and being capable of more than you thought and you know literally standing at the top of Exmoor looking down over Devon and Cornwall and thinking I've just cycled there or you know getting to Scotland and thinking god I've just cycled 700 miles on my own or mostly and pedaling my legs that's it it's you know it's an amazing feeling and I think that does gives you an incredible boost to your confidence um and and it and it's i felt it sort of reconnected me back to a um to a to a form of myself that i had sort of lost touch with you know um because as you travel through life and you know you acquire partner and children and job and things um stuff crowds in on you and you can lose sight of the person that you were and it's not as though you know I'm incredibly fortunate in my family and my husband and you know everybody's incredibly supportive and I didn't I didn't need to break out of anything or to escape or anything like that um so in a way it was all the more surprising that I felt this way but it was invigorating in probably the literal sense of that word energizing and emboldening and a way of dealing with menopausal symptoms and perimenopausal symptoms that now you said on your you know I've read you say that you look back and realize what was going on with you physically.

32:24So do you feel kind of in control of those changes now? Yes, totally. I think doing exercise definitely helps. Being outside definitely helps. You know, filling your lungs with fresh air and just, I think the connection with nature was something that I hadn't really anticipated, the sort of the value of being out in nature. And because so much of our country is, you know, empty, rural nothingness, you know, that was fantastically peaceful and really a wonderful experience for me at the time. And I think really healing for me. You know, you can pedal along and it's so quiet. You can hear sheep tearing at the grasses and you can hear bees buzzing and birds tweeting.

33:17And it's an amazing experience and it does reconnect you with nature. And as I mentioned, there'll be people listening who would like to do something similar. Maybe they haven't got their kind of desire to cycle the length of the country. It could be a completely different challenge. How do you take that first step? Don't overthink it, I think. I think if I'd given it much more thought, I might not have set off. you know i've subsequently discovered there are umpteen facebook groups and things devoted to land and social growths and all sorts of other things um and um and they're fantastic resources and people are asking each other really uh useful questions and you know you might have taken more food quite i might have learned from that um but equally there there is almost so much information out there you could just sort of get put off even starting um so i think i would say don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect bike or the perfect day weather or whatever yeah um i think as you say it could be a bike ride it could be a walk it could be anything and what about other people's voices you know because they're sometimes the ones that can put you off aren't they so you kept it from your your husband well not deliberately no i was going to say maybe maybe we don't always do that um but but not you told people i think it sounds like you told people in the way that people say i'm doing the marathon so that everybody can support them and feel like you know gee them along so maybe there was an element of their feeling you had to be accountable but um but sometimes i guess it's those people around you who say oh you don't want to do that why would you give your career up oh well you know you've got a great job this is yes uh maybe they wanted to get rid of me nobody actually said that um we've wondered when she was gonna do a big cycle thank god um maybe they would also i think people would be just in awe because they probably want to do stuff like that themselves yeah i mean i don't think i had anybody saying uh god don't you know that sounds like a really bad idea nobody nobody said that a lot of people were gosh really i wouldn't you know rather you than me um but i yeah i didn't don't know the thing i didn't have any of those doubters.

35:34But the other thing I would say is that obviously I was very lucky that I had a month I could take and therefore I could take as long as I wanted. You know, it was the amount of time I needed to do it in, given how unfit I was. But you don't have to do a great long adventure. You don't have to wait till you're retired. You don't have to wait till you've got a month. You know, the thing I say to people is go on a micro adventure, go for the weekend, you know go for a day and a night and a day um that's that you'll feel like you've been away for weeks you know and i think that's something that is um achievable i mean one of the reasons i wrote the book is that i wanted people to realize that um that lands end strong growth is an accessible challenge i mean it's hard but if you take the time you can uh you can do it you know if i what did it take you in total in the end 26 days of cycling and obviously you know people can do it in a day and a half but you know um i mean my my sort of feeling was there's a lot of cycling books out there of people that do extraordinary things and they cycle around the world in a week or something and and that's amazing and it's really uh inspiring but you're never going to do it let's face it normal people are not going to do that um so you can read it with a sense of awe and admiration but you're never going to do it yourself and i wanted people to know that that there are more achievable um challenges out there um and that the jog actually isn't just for the fitness freaks yeah and i also i genuinely you know having experienced what i experienced i really wanted people particularly women of midlife and older to to know how empowering it can be to step outside your comfort zone and how healing it can be to spend time alone in nature because that was really the two key takeaways that I came away with.

37:37Well, that seems like the perfect place to end our chat. So thank you so much, Claire. And I think it will inspire lots of people to, as you say, just do micro challenges. And I know some people, for example, do the coastal, the South of England coastal walk-in in a week at a time, don't they? And you don't have to go off and cycle around the world. It can be just as empowering to do those smaller challenges. Absolutely. I hope they do. Thank you so much. Thank you.

38:13Well, my thanks to Claire Davis for coming on The Midpoint. I think you'll agree. What she's done is quite extraordinary. But as she pointed out herself, from a normal kind of ordinary position, she wasn't an extreme athlete and she wasn't looking to break records as so many people do. She wasn't looking to raise millions for charity. She wanted to find something in herself and she's certainly done that. So I hope she's inspired you to do something, maybe a tiny change, maybe a small micro challenge or maybe something as big and bold as she has done. Thanks so much, as always, for listening and I'll see you next time.

38:49You