Robin Hanbury-Tenison, 90, is water-biking 104 miles down the River Thames from Oxford to Teddington Lock over four days. He's doing it to raise £150,000 for a new research station in Cornwall that will study a rare type of rainforest.

The fundraising goal is part of a larger project. The Thousand Year Trust, the organization Hanbury-Tenison works with, wants to build Europe's first research station dedicated to studying temperate Atlantic rainforest. According to The Guardian reporting in April 2025, the station will cost £750,000 total. The Thames water-bike challenge covers about one-fifth of that budget.

What Is Temperate Atlantic Rainforest?

Temperate rainforest is not the thick jungle you might imagine in tropical places. It's a forest that grows in cooler, wetter climates — characterized by very high rainfall and dense layers of moss and lichen clinging to trees. It used to blanket much of western Britain and the Atlantic coasts of Europe, but centuries of grazing, logging, and land drainage destroyed most of it. Today, only small fragments remain, and Bodmin Moor in Cornwall is one of the last places in Britain where it could be restored and studied at a meaningful scale.

Why a Research Station Matters

A permanent research station would be the first of its kind in Europe for this ecosystem. It would allow scientists to do something that short-term research projects cannot: collect data year after year, decade after decade, watching how the forest recovers and how rewilding strategies work over long periods. The Thousand Year Trust's name reflects this thinking — when you're restoring a forest ecosystem, decades feel like a blink.

The Physical Challenge

Water-biking down the Thames is not a casual publicity stunt. The non-tidal stretch from Oxford to Teddington is about 104 miles, taking four days of sustained physical effort. Hanbury-Tenison is one of Britain's most accomplished field explorers — his career includes expeditions to the Amazon and founding Survival International, an organization that defends indigenous peoples' rights. For him, a difficult physical challenge fits his biography.

The Real Question Ahead

The £150,000 from this water-bike event covers one-fifth of the station's cost. Whether the Thousand Year Trust can raise the remaining £600,000 from donors, conservation foundations, or government sources will determine if the project gets built on schedule.

Hanbury-Tenison's reputation helps the fundraising effort. In conservation circles and among wealthy donors, having a respected explorer attached to a project can open doors that grant applications alone may not. But reputation alone does not guarantee money. The question now is whether his profile will attract enough donors to get the station built — and whether £750,000 is enough to build and run it for the long term the trust envisions.