‘If I don’t have long but I have the opportunity, this is the way I want to live my life’

In June 2018, Luke Grenfell-Shaw was diagnosed with stage four cancer.

16 months later, he lowered himself onto his bike saddle in the grounds of his old school, waved to the 100-or so friends that surrounded him, and pedalled through the grand stone arch of Bristol Grammar School.

Along with 30 others, he passed the Haematology and Oncology Centre where he had undergone chemotherapy, and cycled out over Clifton Suspension Bridge.

It was the first leg of his 30,000km journey from Bristol to Beijing.

Luke’s story starts 2018, when he was in Siberia. An incredibly fit 24-year-old, he ran ultramarathons in between Masters and grad scheme applications.

He had developed a slight ache in his left shoulder a few months earlier, which then turned into a bulge, but the physio told him it was just an overly-extended shoulder blade. If he contorted his muscles, he could push his scapula in and make his back look normal. He told himself he was fine.

“You look back and anyone can tell you there’s something really serious,” Luke says. “Eventually I went to the school nurse. I took my top off and she said ‘Bozhe moi’, which means ‘oh my God’ in Russian. That was the first time I realised something was wrong.”

Luke was rushed to collect his belongings and was flown on a last-minute flight to England. 48 hours after stepping into the nurse’s office, he was in Southmead Hospital, biopsy needles sticking into his back. The diagnosis soon came in that he had stage four cancer.

The primary tumour had spread to his lungs and the doctors didn’t think he’d make it as far as Christmas that year.

On the January 1, 2020, Luke set off from Bristol to cycle the to Beijing on a tandem. Photo: Artemi Sakellariades

16 days later, his brother John was on a trip with friends in the Lake District. An able scrambler, John was running away from pursuers in a game called Hare and Hounds, where players are chased over rough ground by their opponents.

He ran onto a section of Hackstacks, a fell notorious for its dangerous gullies. No one knows what happened next, but John never returned to the group. His body was found some hours later.

There is a photograph of Luke from this time. Lying on a hospital bed, his body curled, facing away from the camera, he looks incredibly vulnerable, like he is trying to escape the world.

“I just had to focus on myself, to get through that treatment,” he says. “It was my parents who had to deal with the horror of it. In the space of a month, one son is diagnosed with cancer and the other dies. Imagine what that is like as a parent.”

It was an awful time. But even from the day of diagnosis, Luke had an ambition for the future.

“A lot of people have a cherished dream,” he says. “For me, that was an around-the-world cycle ride. I assumed I’d do it when I was 35 or 40, when I’d bought a house and all this stuff. But on the day that I was diagnosed, I understood that if I had the opportunity, this was the way I wanted to live my life. To go on a bike ride around the world.”

Luke was lucky; he did make it past Christmas 2018. In fact, the cancer went into remission and, by 2020, he was ready to start his journey.

On the road, Luke cycles 80 to 100km a day. He’s often not sure where he’ll sleep each night, but he’s got his tent as back-up if he needs it. What with the cycling, his blog, his podcast and the five cancer charities he raises money for, it’s not clear whether he finds the time to sleep anyway.

The team of volunteers supporting him are a big help. And often, Luke has been joined by “canlivers” – fellow cancer sufferers demonstrating that living with cancer should not stop one living life to its fullest.

“As someone who has cancer, you can often let your identity be reduced to that of a patient,” Luke says. “And that robs you of your autonomy. So taking a decision to do exercise is a really empowering step” even if it’s just “walking up and down the corridor three times, once a day.

In the UK leg of Luke’s journey he did motivational talks at schools and universities. Sometimes he’d get asked about this new disease that had been discovered in China – some coronavirus called Covid-19. Was he worried about being able to get into Beijing?

That’s a year away, Luke would smile. It’ll be fine by then.

By March 2020, he was in Geneva, planning to pass across the top of Italy.

“That’s when the reports started coming in of various provinces closing down,” he says.

“I almost tried to go by Italy anyway. I just assumed that somehow I was going to navigate my way through, like some leaf that is tossed by the hurricane but that gets out the other side. So it did catch me by surprise that, in the end, I couldn’t.”

“It’s my firm belief that we all can live, richly and fully, even with cancer,” says Luke. “And it is up to us all to proactively create our own opportunities.” Photo: Paul Bullivant

Luke spent five months back in the UK, hoping that he would be able to continue his journey but refusing to waste his days in the meantime. That was when he started his podcast, interviewing people such as Bristol mayor Marvin Rees and former-Cabinet member Rory Stewart.

“I had this decision to make, whether I was going to be incredibly resentful that once again my dream of cycling around the world had been taken away from me, or whether I said: okay, this is the situation,” Luke said. “What can I do to make the time back in Bristol as good as possible?”

He’s back on the road now and currently cycling through Turkey, after a long period when he didn’t know whether he would complete the ride. But uncertainty is something Luke is used to dealing with.

“As it stands, I’m in remission,” he says. “But how long for, no one knows. It’s a case of having scans every few months and hoping that they come back with good news – but there’s just no guarantee of that.

“I’m acutely aware that the next scan that comes back could halt this expedition much more thoroughly than Covid does.

“It’s very easy for people to look at Luke Grenfell-Shaw, who has cancer and say, ‘Sure, he has to follow his dreams now. But I’m going to wait till I’m retired.’

“And I, at that point, say, let me tell you about John. John who died completely out of the blue at the age of 25. And anyone in June 2018 looking at both of us would have said, with a very high degree of confidence, that it would be John who would be around in two years, not me.”

Main photo: Paul Bullivant

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