Age is nothing but a number, and Peter McNulty, 60, and his wife Colleen, 64, are living proof that you can do anything you set your mind to.
The retired couple started their epic cycle journey in Amsterdam to prove to their peers that life doesn’t end at retirement.
“We are doing this because we want to get through to other couples of our age that you don’t have to be couch potatoes and sit in front of the television all day.
“There is life out there for everyone who has retired,” they told Weekend Argus earlier this week.
The McNultys have just arrived from their 18-month, 20600km cycling journey, which has been Peter’s lifelong dream.
The couple’s final lap ends at 10am tomorrow at the V&A Waterfront, where they will be available for pictures.
Catching up with the couple in Pinelands, where they were visiting friends, they seemed energetic and looked much younger than their age in their cycling gear.
“It had always been a lifelong dream of mine. I had wanted to do it with my brother but he got married to an Austrian lady,” said Peter.
He had wanted to do the challenge since 1988 but wasn’t able to do so. He now feels that he and his wife have achieved a lifetime goal.
“I did not have the courage to do it alone after my brother told me he had met a woman and believed he was going to marry her, and therefore could not do the tour with me.
“Then I just parked it until now,” he said.
When Peter asked his wife to join him on the journey, she “laughed and told him to send me postcards along the way”, said Colleen.
When she eventually decided to join her husband, she had thought it would only be for the European leg of the journey.
“I told him I would think about going beyond Cairo - I was afraid of cycling the African countries, but the reception we got was amazing and the people were very warm and welcoming. My toughest stint was Ethiopia because of the steep mountains, and I am not really a sporty person, but I managed,” said Colleen.
One of her highlights was exploring unused underground tunnels in Italy that had been converted to cycle paths with sensors that trigger fairy lights to guide cyclists through to the other side.
“Other highlights for the coupled included “the special history of the Abu Simbel Temples in southern Egypt; their security escort in a volatile place in Egypt; cycling through national parks between elephants and game; and having picnics on the road and encounters with strangers who became family”, she said.
The couple celebrated both their birthdays on the road as well as their 20th anniversary in Zanzibar.
“We travelled to countries like Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Tanzania and Zanzibar, and we went to Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho,” said
Colleen.