Happy Friday!

Early on Monday morning, I'll be waiting for a bus to take me to Poole harbour for a ferry across the Channel, the first and second of five vehicles that will carry me to Trieste, where I rejoin Thighs of Steel for the glory run to Athens.

Cycle touring isn't known for its promotion of personal hygiene. In those last three weeks of riding, I'll probably have only 8 showers and wash my clothes twice. Most days, I'll wake up in the sweat I accumulated the day before, and step into the clothes still encrusted with grime from the past days' riding.

Most days, our only chance to scrub will be in rivers, lakes and perhaps under a bucket. Shampoo, perfume and pomade are, for most of us, redundant.

But not for all of us.

~

Mahmoud couldn't actually cycle, but joined the van team for two weeks from Paris to the Pyrenees. He couldn't ride because of a long-term knee injury sustained during the Syrian civil war. He now lives in Germany.

One thing you should know about Mahmoud is that he is very particular about his personal hygiene. Every morning, he trims his finely sculpted beard. He combs wax through his styled hair. He applies perfume to neck and wrists, and coats himself in a layer of antiperspirant.

Where most of us have perhaps one change, Mahmoud seems to have a bottomless wardrobe of crisp, clean clothes. He jumps when there's mud, and refuses to swim in our rivers and lakes because the water is dirty. In fact, it seems to him, almost everything is dirty.

He does everything he can to hold back the inevitable tides of sweat and grime that two weeks' camping set down. His careful preening is a good-humoured joke.

~

'I had days where I slept with the blood of other people on my body,' Mahmoud says. 'Because you sleep when you are tired, you don't care about yourself. You can't imagine the dirt - sometimes I slept in some shit.'

We're sitting on an artful block of concrete on the banks of the Garonne in Bordeaux and Mahmoud is explaining why he is such a stickler for cleanliness.

'Because of this trauma - why do I have to be dirty? Why do I have to smell?' His voice rises in incredulity that anyone would choose dirt.

'Everything is in my hands now. I don't want to go back to those days. I have a developed nose and any smell could bring me flashback - I don't want any flashback.'

~

'I feel like cleanliness makes me trust myself more,' Mahmoud explains. 'If somebody smells in front of me, I take a step back.' 

As a refugee, Mahmoud feels like 'the whole society has taken a step back from me already.' He doesn't need to add bad hygiene to the repulsion.

Mahmoud met Harri and Annie, two of the brains behind Thighs of Steel, at a grassroots community centre in Athens. 'At Khora, everyone was lovely,' Mahmoud says. 'Fucking amazing lovely people. But Khora was a small world, really.'

The small world of fucking amazing lovely people doesn't care whether you're a refugee, whether you're dirty or smell bad, or are dressed in cheap clothes. But the big world does.

~

'The big world really don't like you, really don't want you, and don't accept you,' Mahmoud says. 'So I have to do what other Syrians do. They spend money to wear Adidas, to wear Gucci - why? To fit into the society, so people know they have money, so people stop judging them. You cannot afford Gucci if you are not working.'

'I could lie to myself and say everyone is nice - no. People smile in front of your face, but they don't like you. They smile in front of your face for the society. Do you think that everyone talks to me nicely?'

'For me, to look good and to be clean could help me in front of society. People might accept me.'

~

Over the past four years, Thighs of Steel supporters have raised more than a quarter of a million pounds for grassroots refugee organisations like Khora. Already this year we've raised more than £50,000.

If you want to help...