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At the age of 90, I seem to have found myself embarking on another improbable challenge: water-biking on the Thames from Oxford to London, raising funds for the @ThousandYearTrust to research and restore Britain’s lost rainforests.

It’s the equivalent of a marathon a day for 4 days – a doddle really. If you’d like to sponsor me, I would be enormously grateful. My JustGiving page is linked in my bio.

#TemperateRainforest #WaterBikeChallenge #robinhanburytenison #Cornwall

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿

An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return.

@merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it.

“I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.”

We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

We’re excited to launch our crowdfunding campaign to build the UK’s first ever Rainforest Research Station – and we need your help to make it a reality!

Thanks to the incredible support of Aviva, all donations up to £250 will be MATCHED – meaning your gift will go twice as far!

Our goal? To raise £110,000 to create a hub for research, conservation, and community engagement that will protect the UK’s rare temperate rainforest for generations to come.

Join us in making a lasting difference. Together, we can better understand, protect and expand this precious ecosystem by building a space where people and nature thrive.

Donate today and be part of something special!

#CornwallRainforest #ThousandYearTrust #AvivaMatches #Crowdfunding #DoubleYourImpact #RainforestResearch #MakeADifference #Conservation #ProtectNature

A life spent in wild places, but nothing, nothing, has moved me quite like watching my son walk into the same places and decide, with complete conviction, to spend his life protecting them.

His name is Merlin. And he has done what every father secretly hopes for and never quite dares to expect.He has taken what mattered most to me and built something our grandchildren will one day bring their own children to and whisper, this is where it all began.

I am proud in a way I find difficult to put into words. And I will confess something else, with the honesty that only ninety years earns you.

I am jealous.

Jealous because what Merlin is building at the @thousandyeartrust:this research station, this gathering place for scientists and storytellers and dreamers, this quiet revolution in the heart of Cornwall’s ancient rainforest, is the beginning of something I would have given anything to start myself.

A new movement. A new generation. A new chapter for the forests I have spent my life trying to save.

That is how it should be. The explorer plants the seed. The next generation tends what grows.

I could not be more grateful that someone with his conviction is the one building it.

Share this story. Pass it on to a friend. Or please donate to the JustGiving link in my bio; every contribution brings this research station one step closer to being built.

#RobinHanburyTenison#ThousandYearTrust #AtlanticRainforest #TemperateRainforest #Cornwall

Every great expedition begins with a single step into the unknown, a step I have taken countless times in the world’s great rainforests. Over the years, I have witnessed the world’s great rainforests breathe and burn. I have come to realise, more profoundly than words can convey, that what happens to a forest happens to all of us.

Now, tucked into the ancient valley of Cabilla in Cornwall, in the heart of Europe’s own Temperate Rainforest Zone, something extraordinary is taking shape. The @thousandyeartrust is building what has never existed before: Europe’s first temperate rainforest research station. A permanent home where scientists, students and storytellers from across the globe will gather to understand, restore and expand what remains of Britain’s most precious and most overlooked ecosystem. Because Healthy native woodland is the very thing that can help us repair what we have broken: the climate, the soil, our trees.

This is a once-in-a-generation endeavour. And I mean that quite literally.

And so, this June, at 90, I shall set out from Oxford atop a water bike, determined to pedal one hundred miles to London. Four days, thirty-one locks, and a journey that will end on International Rainforest Day. Some may call it mad (most of my family do!), but I have found that the most worthwhile adventures often are.

If you cannot join me on the water, join us in spirit. Share this story. Pass it on to a friend. Or follow the JustGiving link in my bio; every contribution brings this research station one step closer to being built. 🙏🌱
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[Reel includes video renderings of how tge temperate rainforest research station will look like when built]

#RobinHanburyTenison #WaterBikeChallenge #InternationalRainforestDay #thousandyeartrust #temperaterainforest

My deepest thanks to each and every one of you who has donated so generously so far. Your kindness means more than words can say. 🌿

We are already at £6,177, 6% of our target and what a beautiful start it is!

Yet, as with all true adventures, the journey is just beginning, much like the one I’ll be taking this June — setting out from Oxford atop a water bike, pedalling 100 miles to London over four days, ending on International Rainforest Day.

Every contribution supports the Thousand Year Trust and a vision that is nothing short of historic: the creation of Europe’s first temperate rainforest research station. This will be a lasting sanctuary for the science and ambition our precious British rainforest so richly deserves.

If you have not yet joined us, I invite you to share this story, speak with friends about it, or lend your support via the JustGiving link. Together, we can turn this dream into a living reality!

#RobinHanburyTenison #WaterBikeChallenge #InternationalRainforestDay #thousandyeartrust

Some journeys linger even if many years have passed. I have made the first crossings of South America, explored most corners on this earth and yet, of all these places, it is Mulu in Borneo, and a man called Nyapun, who remain most vivid in my memory.

My name is Robin Hanbury-Tenison. I have spent ninety years on this Earth, and most of the good ones deep inside it, the Amazon, the Sahara, the rainforests of Borneo. I have photographed faces that had never been photographed. I have walked into places that no longer exist.

In 1977, I led one of the largest expeditions the Royal Geographical Society had ever mounted, into the rainforests of Mulu, Borneo. Fifteen months. And there was one man, above all others, who taught me what it truly meant to belong to a forest. His name was Nyapun. We became greatest friends. A man who read the jungle as though it were home. Because it was.

I have watched forests disappear across my lifetime. Now, from our home on Bodmin Moor, perched on the wild Atlantic edge of Cornwall, I watch as Britain’s own ancient temperate rainforests retreat.

Exploration is not about conquest. It never was. It is about understanding. I have learned that understanding often arrives just before the loss.

And so, this June, I shall set out from Oxford atop a water bike, determined to pedal 100 miles to London. Four days, ending on International Rainforest Day. At ninety years of age, I can truly say that I have never meant anything more sincerely in my life.

Every penny raised goes to the @thousandyeartrust , towards something that has never existed before: Europe’s first temperate rainforest research station. A permanent home for the science and ambition that Britain’s rainforest deserves.

Please support by sharing my story , having a conversation, or donating via the JustGiving page link in Bio.

#RobinHanburyTenison #WaterBikeChallenge#InternationalRainforestDay #ThousandYearTrust#TemperateRainforest cornwall

In ninety years of wandering this Earth, nothing humbled me quite like stepping beneath the canopy of an Atlantic Temperate Rainforest..

When most people picture rainforests, they imagine the humid jungles of the equator. Yet along the Atlantic fringes of Britain and Ireland, a different kind of rainforest persists, older, rarer, and shaped by centuries of wind and rain.

Tropical rainforests depend on heat and unbroken sunlight. In contrast, temperate rainforests endure through constant mist, gentle temperatures, and unending rain. Here, rocks and branches are cloaked in mosses, liverworts, and lichens, some of which exist almost nowhere else on this planet.

While tropical forests impress with their vastness, temperate rainforests reveal their richness in subtler ways and they are rarer than tropical rainforests. Far rarer. And they are disappearing without so much as a headline.

I haven’t much time left for expeditions. But I tell you this,researching what remains of these rainforests may be the most important journey your generation ever takes.

Please support my water bike challenge by sharing this post, having a conversation, or donating via the JustGiving page link in Bio.

Every little helps. Thank you, sincerely.

Robin Hanbury-Tenison OBE.
— Explorer, Conservationist, Author. 90 years old and still at it.

#TemperateRainforest #AtlanticRainforest #cornwall #robinhanburytenison #waterbikechallenge

We’re looking for a driven Restoration Manager to come and join the team at @thousandyeartrust 🌱

We’ve got some incredible plans and exciting milestones ahead and would love for the perfect person to be part of our journey.

Full role description in Bio - to apply, email hello@thousandyeartrust.org with a short covering letter and CV 📧

#restorationmanager #charityjobs #temperaterainforest #cornwall

We’re looking for a driven Restoration Manager to come and join the team at @thousandyeartrust 🌱

We’ve got some incredible plans and exciting milestones ahead and would love for the perfect person to be part of our journey.

Full role description in Bio - to apply, email hello@thousandyeartrust.org with a short covering letter and CV 📧

#restorationmanager #charityjobs #temperaterainforest #cornwall

We’re looking for a driven Restoration Manager to come and join the team at @thousandyeartrust 🌱

We’ve got some incredible plans and exciting milestones ahead and would love for the perfect person to be part of our journey.

Full role description in Bio - to apply, email hello@thousandyeartrust.org with a short covering letter and CV 📧

#restorationmanager #charityjobs #temperaterainforest #cornwall

We’re looking for a driven Restoration Manager to come and join the team at @thousandyeartrust 🌱

We’ve got some incredible plans and exciting milestones ahead and would love for the perfect person to be part of our journey.

Full role description in Bio - to apply, email hello@thousandyeartrust.org with a short covering letter and CV 📧

#restorationmanager #charityjobs #temperaterainforest #cornwall

More mobility. More action. More impact. ​
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We are proud to announce the six winners of the Defender Awards 2025. A programme dedicated to celebrating those protecting people, wildlife and the planet.​

Our six winners are:
Thousand Year Trust, UK.
Next Commons Lab, Japan.
PolluSub, France.
Skin Check Champions, Australia.
Salviamo l’Orso, Italy.
The Litterboom Project, South Africa.
​
To learn more about our winners, visit our YouTube channel.​
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#Defender #DefenderAwards​

For the @allblacks, training outside is a big part of their lives. But how often do they stop and think about the impact being in nature can have on their mental and physical health?  
 
Four teammates spent time in nature with conservationist and mental health advocate @merlinhanburytennison, where they explored the vital relationship between our health and the health of our planet. 

Watch the full film by following the link in our bio.
 
Bupa is the official healthcare partner of the All Blacks and Black Ferns.

This forest is a 4,000-year-old living entity.

It’s a giant mushroom with thousands of fingers pointing in the air.

Our purpose is to make sure that with each human generation it is slightly bigger, more biodiverse and more harmonious.