Glenn Morris diverted from his five-day ride between Glen Innes and Uralla on Saturday evening to quickly return home to Inverell.
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The farmer, who has been riding his stock horse Hombre to promote climate change as an election issue, had received the news that his first grandchild had been born on Friday.
"After I got the horse settled I drove over to Inverell and saw my little granddaughter, which is melting my heart thinking of her and her future. It just consolidates why I'm on the road," Glenn said.
On Sunday morning, he stopped in Armidale's Central Park during his fourth day on the road, riding for climate action after leaving from Glen Innes on Anzac Day.
"We've had a lot of people stop along the road who have heard about what I'm doing and they're really positive about it," Glenn said, adding that he'd received plenty of positive feedback, even before the ride began.
"A farmer in my area, a conventional farmer, he's losing sleep over the lack of water on his farm, and I told him what I was doing and I don't expect everyone will share my views on climate, but he just said, someone's got to do this. We've got to get the reality of what's going on with climate change out there, and I'm happy to do that.
"Politicians for too long have buried the truth on climate, so it's time to really get serious and take action," he said.
Those words - Climate Action Now - are blazoned across the back of the vest Glenn has worn throughout his journey down the New England Highway.
Glenn's ride, which ended in Uralla on Monday morning, is the latest stand he has taken on climate change and environmental issues, which gained national attention when he rode Hombre across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2016.
But his interest in the problem goes back long before then, and long before it became a political issue and a subject for debate.
"I started fighting for climate change awareness, action and solutions 20 years ago. There was a lot of debate about whether it was real or not, but I started doing a masters in sustainability to study it, and one of the quotes I found was that we needed urgent action otherwise humanity was in real trouble.
"On top of that, if we go back to the late eighties, journalists reported that the awareness of the climate issue among Australians was greater than any other nation in the world. There was no debate.
"So it's actually been a constructed debate to try and divide the population, so we didn't take action, so we could maintain fossil fuels and all the industries around it.
"It's always been real, and that what I say to people is there shouldn't be any debate between different groups, it shouldn't be a political issue, it's a real issue and it's happening all around us," he said.
