It's all a case of which end of the telescope you're looking through. When I was the "fearless" teen heading off to places my parents had never heard of they were the ones left at home with no news or updates (no phones back then) until I either returned or didn't. I was the expert rider who would never have an accident and it was all going to be an awfully big adventure (although not in the Peter Pan sense!) and I'd come back and go on to greater things. Why should they worry, everything was fine.

Even the girlfriends who went with me were going to be fine. Why wouldn't the parents of the girly naive daughters who'd never been further than a coach trip to London be happy watching them ride off to the back end of Europe with someone they hardly knew? Of course they wouldn't get injured and of course they wouldn't come back pregnant. Why did we have all these arguments over a simple bike trip?

Fast forward a generation and I'm now the parent. Even with phones, email etc I'm worrying if my children are going to be safe as they off to China or somewhere I've never heard of. It's because I have no control over what they're doing, who they're meeting, what dangers are lurking. It's a parental duty to protect children until they've survived enough scrapes to reach maturity but as a parent you never know when that point is reached. Worry and its somewhat uptight first cousin, responsibility, continues until the grim reaper takes a hand. Now I know what my pillion passengers parents were going through and I do have a degree of guilt over my lack of understanding.

Worry over something outside your control is endemic.My wife's parents (in their 80's) still worry about their daughters (in their late 50's) when either of them go off on a bike trip. As a parent it goes with the territory but all you can do is keep it in check and realise that boundaries have to be pushed. You worry but realise that this is how life works out. So, understand what she's going through, reasure her and go and do it anyway.