Meet the Liverpool woman who cycled 300 miles around Vietnam to help more than 200 people celebrate Christmas

Chef and businesswoman Michelle O’Dwyer has raised more than £2,000 after cycling 300 miles around Vietnam.

And she tackled the enormous challenge to raise funds for her event, Christmas Dinner Michelle, so 270 people who don’t want to be alone on Christmas Day can spend it together.

“I hadn’t cycled for 15 years, I didn’t even own a bike when I decided to do the challenge,” says Michelle, “and it wasn’t easy.

“But I just told myself to keep going and reminding myself why I was doing it.”

It’s the third Christmas Dinner Michelle, from North Liverpool, has organised and she can’t wait for December 25. 

“We have people coming from all over Merseyside; adults with disabilities, military veterans, families, all sorts of different people, and it’s like a massive family Christmas on steroids,” she laughs. “It’s chaos, but it’s great, and it just makes me so happy.”

Michelle made the nine-day bike trek from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi in the South East Asian country, starting from September 27.

She explains: “It was my 50th birthday in October and I was going to do something, and maybe go away.

“But then I thought Christmas Day and the dinner is coming, funding is tight, there are no guarantees anymore… what can I do? And I thought, do you know what, I’m going to cycle 300 miles around Vietnam.

“It was about three months before I actually did it; someone gave me a bike and I began training.”

Although she admits that nothing could have prepared her for what lay ahead.

Michelle, who’s owner of private dining company Baytree Events and Baytree Cookery Academy CIC which works with communities and organisations across the north west teaching health, budgeting, teamwork and wellbeing, as well as international cuisine, says: “Everyone else who was doing it was an avid cyclist, and I think they thought I was a bit mad.

“I was completely out of my comfort zone. One day I got gastroenteritis, so I was being sick – and more – and on another I had a reaction to whatever someone had washed my cycling gear in, so it felt like I had ants in my pants!

“I kept telling myself to keep pedalling and that was where the work I have done with military veterans through the academy and who I’ve taken part in other events like a triathlon with, paid off. 

“They say it doesn’t matter if you come last. It doesn’t matter if you fail. The whole point is that you try!

“It was a huge achievement. It felt amazing.”

It means more to Michelle that she can offer the Community Christmas Dinner which takes place at Vauxhall Community Centre, providing food and drinks, as well as entertainment and presents for so many.

She organises it through her own CIC with help from Tom Harrison House, the charity which provides a specialist addiction recovery programme for UK Armed Forces veterans and emergency services, and partners like John Lewis, Jaguar Land Rover, Liverpool Dinner Club – who’ve just raised and donated £600, and Julie Lawson CIC.

“The thing I love about the Christmas Day dinner is the way people come together.

“I couldn’t do it without the people who help me: the volunteers from Tom Harrison House who come the day before to help me peel and prepare everything, the people who help on the day – including now my own mum and dad – and everyone who supports it.

“It’s full with 270 people, and I’ve still got people ringing up who want to come.

“We have craft tables, we have board game areas as well as the entertainment; we have karaoke, and it’s a wonderful day. Everyone leaves with a food hamper too.

“I started it because I was struggling at Christmas.  A relationship had broken down and even though I had family who all invited me to theirs, I felt like the fifth wheel, and it was hard.

“I did the first dinner on the Wirral in 2019 and after Covid, when we prepared Christmas dinners for people and took them out, I moved it to Liverpool. 

“I started volunteering in 2016 at the Joseph Lappin Centre in Old Swan, and then I cooked Christmas dinner in a rehab centre.

“All of that happened after someone was kind to me when I was suffering from depression. They helped me when I was at my lowest and it made me realise there was a different way of living, that there was more to life. It was the catalyst to changing my life because I trained to teach and started doing what I’m doing now.

“I am blessed.”

Michelle smiles: “The Community Christmas Dinner is amazing. It’s about old fashioned values, making people happy and making them see that they matter.

“It’s about talking and sharing. It’s about kindness.

“That’s what Christmas is all about.”

ind out more about Christmas Dinner Michelle here.

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