Tucked away in a quiet cul-de-sac in Otley, there's a modest adventurer who puts most of us to shame. A 65-year-old who cycles 4,000 miles a year and a seasoned backpacker and traveller, Ray Dunn is making the most of his golden years. Suzy Poole reports.

RETIREMENT IS wonderful for Ray Dunn, who almost seems grateful to have been made redundant six years ago.

"Let's face it, at 59 and a sales director of a failed company, I wasn't going to get another job. My wife, Marjorie, had a job as a teacher so I became a house husband. She retired last year and now we're in cloud cuckoo land!"

And cloud cuckoo land is jam-packed with exotic adventures, community work and most of all, cycling.

Despite only buying a £200 bike three years ago, Ray is a familiar sight on the slopes of Otley and says the best thing about the sport is not letting a hill beat him.

Clocking up thousands of miles each year, he denies he's superfit. But his wife Marjorie, 64, who often accompanies him, disagrees. "He likes to try to keep me fit. He goes up hills, comes down for me and goes back up again.

"He's biking from John O'Groats to Lands End this year which will take about 20 days. I'm going with him but I think I'll follow him in the car."

Ray's previous cycling challenge was an emotional 14-day journey for charity around one of the most deprived areas in the world, Malawi, in east Africa.

"It was tearful, it really was," he says. "The average pay over there is 20p a day and the average life span is about 41 years.

"Honestly, we don't know what we have in Britain. We know now that if we're alive next Wednesday, we'll have something to eat - they don't.

"A white face in Malawi is extremely unusual. There's no tourism or industry, there's just poverty. It's different from Britain in that we have cities and conurbations but they're scattered everywhere.

"All along the road every 40 yards there was a shack where people lived. They would come to the side of the road to wave and greet us. It was lovely but the kids all had distended stomachs. The poverty was just cruel."

He added that the only good thing was the lack of waste. "England is full of litter but not over there. They make use of everything - the kids' ball to play football was just rubbish tied up with bits of twine."

Ray was the oldest member of the 16-man team to complete the 480-mile trip in aid of the British Leprosy Relief Association (LEPRA). But he was confident about the challenge which separated him from Marjorie for the longest period since his National Service.

"My anxiety was that at my age, I was going to be at the back all the time but I wasn't. I was somewhere in the middle. There were only two of us who biked up every hill and didn't get off and I was one of them."

But confessing to being a luxury man, he says: "We stayed in some awful places. They were called rest houses and they were really dreadful.

"The first place we went to, one of the people had a room full of termites. I was the first person to have a shower. There was just a cupful of water and I was the last person who managed to have one."

Ray has so far raised nearly £1,700 for LEPRA and it's a tribute to his popularity and standing in the community that he did not even have to ask people for sponsorship, the money just flooded in.

His list of activities is endless, from school governor and committee member of the local Citizens Advice Bureau to voluntary work for talking newspapers, meals on wheels and the church.

And as a former Otley Mayor and councillor, he is still politically active standing for election as councillor with Marjorie in Prince Henry's ward just last year.

With all his commitments, it's hard to believe Ray finds time to fit in everyday life such as visiting his three children and ten grandchildren. But even on family holidays, he and Marjorie manage to squeeze in adventures. With a skiing holiday planned for later this year and fond memories of backpacking through South America and South Africa, there's no stopping them.

"We went to Madagascar in October. That was lovely but poverty abounded. We travelled on public transport only and there was one occasion when I was hanging on to the outside of a bus and there was a fellow clinging on behind me, and behind him another. That's one of the wonderful things about it."

An adventurer Ray may be, but even he admits travelling can have its disadvantages.

"Malawi produces about 93 varieties of potatoes and we ate things like potatoes cooked in tomatoes which were beautiful. But sometimes all we got to eat was a plate of bones and I didn't really go for that.

"And they were selling beer out of cardboard cartons - it was just vile. It had lumps in it like porridge. I went back to the Carlsberg even though the local beer only cost about 1p!"

As a retired couple, Ray and Marjorie are truly a force to be reckoned with and on a normal day would exhaust the best of us. But despite their exotic trips and diary full of commitments, they still take pleasure in the simple things of life such as the view of the rolling hills from their lounge window.

Marjorie says they have a lot to be thankful for. "When you retire, that's the time to put something back into the community. Nobody knows how long they're going to be fit and able. These are the golden years."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.