A little bit about Barrie ...
Barrie Wade started cycling to celebrate retirement as professor of English in Education at Birmingham University. He promptly broke his wrist in collision with a wheelie bin (another repair at the Alex!), but persevered to complete a tough charity ride across Costa Rica in torrential rain. Since then he has done several more charity cycles, notably Land’s End to John O’Groats in 2004 when he completed the 1004 miles in just over 9 days. This he says was simply because sightseeing was out of the question in the cold, rainy weather with mainly head winds, so he just kept going. This is when the idea of a ride across Australia began to take shape. Fantasising about tumble driers and using hairdryers to dry sodden cycling shoes in B&Bs, he began to think that there must be warmer places where it didn’t rain quite so much. The Nullarbor desert!
As well as teaching, researching and writing books on education, Barrie has always written for pleasure. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction books are much used in schools and Barrie has regularly worked with pupils of all ages all over Britain, sometimes with the support of the Poetry Society and the Arts Council, helping children to enjoy and improve their own writing. Retirement gave him the opportunity to increase this work and to offer his services to schools free of charge. For the Australia Challenge schools benefit from his input and, in return, pupils engage in a sponsored read or sponsored spell so that Mencap and the Alexandra Hospital can also benefit. (find out more)
Barrie is a governor of the Mencap National College, which prepares students with learning disabilities for the next stage of their lives. For the past year he has been working with another governor, Dr Magggie Moore, helping students to find their voices and to express themselves in writing. The amazing results will be published in June 2006 in a book “We too have a voice” that celebrates Mencap’s 60th anniversary.