Paul Franklin

I was born in New Zealand in 1958, and have lived there most of my life, but for the past 7 years, I’ve been living in Ireland.

At the age of 13, I fractured my neck at C3. Because of that injury, I gradually started losing feeling from my waist down many years later, and had a neck corpectomy with fusion in the year 2000. In 2013, I was having low back pain due to bulging discs, and subsequently had a spinal fusion (ILIF). Other surgeries involve both my shoulders, and my leg. I have had some physical challenges for sure, but nothing compared to the tragic loss my wife and I suffered when 2 out of 3 of our triplets passed shortly after their birth in 1981.

Since 2015 I’ve cycled over 20 countries, walked 942 kms of a Camino, walked the length of Ireland ( from Malin Head to Mizen Head and Cycled back to Malin Head ) twice, for the charity Galway Hospice in 2019, and again in 2021. In 2022 I walked the Main Canals, and The National Famine Way (418 kms in 18 days). In January 2019 I was a nominee for the “Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award,” by Outsider Ireland Magazine. I am otherwise known as the ‘Spinal Fusion Guy on a Bike’.