For now I am prepared to believe that Nick is legit and his primary goal is to raise money for charity. And if he becomes famous for it and can earn a living selling his book and doing lecture tours then OK for him. I know there are a lot of people who will disagree with me , but that's another matter. For the purpose of the rest of this post let's assume it's legit.
My main concern is what is his overall strategy. The budget for this campaign must be astronomical, well into six figures. I would guess the visa costs alone are over a grand . The airfares are too scary to even think of. His goal of £250,000 seems low compared to the overall cost. Heck, the airfares could be more than that.
Even if he achieves his goal of £250,000 people may well think the return on investment is not worth it. Here in Canada there is a general backlash against charity stunts. "I need $5000 to cycle across Canada for charity" - No, but I will give $100 to charity if you volunteer to work at a homeless shelter for two months instead. Basically people want a real return for their investment and not that most of it has gone into hotel rooms and restaurant meals.
For Nick to avoid the freeloader stigma he would need to raise well over £1,000,000. A figure he is not going to achieve through clicks on the Donate Now button. I assume he is hoping his campaign will go viral and donations will flood in . In which case I'm not sure I would have recommended the itinerary he has posted. Canada and the USA are two wealthy English speaking countries with extensive media coverage. Doing then 1 and 2 is a bit of a missed opportunity. I would have recommended starting in Africa getting a stock of good photos and stories of dodging lions and dodging bullets and then impress the American media.
I know he does return to the US again and is there for five weeks in the Fall so maybe that is when he is hoping to get traction with the media. If I was part of his team I would see those five weeks as key. This visit splits his European phase however most of the wealthy countries, France, Germany , Italy are before the US visit whereas the poorer countries, Latvia, Moldova, Belarus, are afterwards. I would have recommended it to be the other way round.
Maybe I'm just over thinking all this. In an earlier post I was surprised at how unplanned his Toronto run was , heck starting in January in Canada makes one wonder at the depth of planning . This will be an interesting one to follow.