Last year the wonderful Jo Hook reminded me of the need to cut down on our flights for the environment. Although this had been on my mind for years, it's something that is so easy to forget when you're invited on a holiday or you move to another country and are FOMOing about everything back home. This year I've decided to do something about it, limiting my flights to only the essential and experimenting with different forms of transport to and from my new and old homelands. This is my first flight replacement trip and I'm going for the most painful 1st, cycling from Santander to Porto and maybe Lisbon if I have time. I'll use trains and ferries for the rest of the journey from Bristol. I'll also be fundraising for Temwa, who are supporting communities in Malawi, who are on the front line of dealing with the climate change.

Your generous contribution will help Temwa to continue providing an infrastructure to support families in this region facing financial and humanitarian hardship. Nkhata Bay North is a very remote, hard-to-reach area with limited infrastructure, and very limited support from other NGOs and government. Temwa implements community-driven projects in the areas of health, education, agriculture and forestry to support people living in Nkhata Bay North to transform their futures. Your donation will help us to increase communities' access to safe water, essential sexual health and rights services, preschool and secondary school education, as well as food and income security.

These communities are at the forefront of the climate crisis, and harvests are routinely being destroyed by heavy rains and prolonged droughts. Currently, Malawi’s winter period is unusually hot, meaning winter crops are failing, and nationwide around 5.7 million people are suffering from extreme hunger. This year Temwa is supporting the communities with solar powered water irrigation systems, which will enable farmers to water their crops despite extreme weather. We have been generously donated solar panels by the NextEnergy Foundation, Temwa is providing the irrigation kits.

If you felt you could give something to Jo's incredible charity Temwa, It will hopefully make the pain of the saddle much easier to bear! They are doing incredible work.