Take On Africa

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3 weeks, 4 countries, 7 boat rides, 1200km cycled. There have been good days and bad days, the best days and worst ones. At times it’s been tough and tiring, and yes there have even been tears. At times it’s been thrilling and exciting, and I’ve thought I must be the luckiest person alive. All [...]

A lot has been and gone since the last update… 3 weeks, 4 countries, 7 boat rides, 1200km cycled. There have been good days and bad days, the best days and worst ones. At times it’s been tough and tiring, and yes there have even been tears. At times it’s been thrilling and exciting, and [...]

Soulful St. Louis Arriving in St. Louis was the best introduction to Senegal I could have hoped for. We crossed the bridge from the mainland having weaved our way through the bustling market between the donkey-carts and equally slow-moving black and yellow taxi cabs congesting the roads. Over on the island, the pace of life [...]

“Knowledge is like a Baobab tree, one person’s arms cannot encompass it.” – African proverb On the ride from St. Louis towards The Gambia, we have passed many impressive baobab trees and one evening we even camped beneath one.  I thought I’d share with you some of the photos… The Baobab tree, Adansonia digitata, can [...]

Since my last update in Nouakchott, where I signed off at the point of disembarkation of the iron-ore train with decision to take a bush-taxi to Atar in the depths of the Mauritanian desert rather than cycle the 120km piste, so much has happened I don’t quite know where to begin or what to write [...]

Day 1 – Slow start Not even half a day in reality. By the time we’d had breakfast, packed our panniers, checked emails and then carried the bikes down the narrow stairs of the hotel it was nearing the end of the morning. We had decided to cycle the twenty-or-so kilometres to El Marsa port [...]

Made it into Nouadhibou in Mauritania, having crossed the Western Sahara in little more than six days. It was good, but time for a break…. There’s more desert where I’m headed!

Gateway to the Sahara Guelmim, the ‘gateway to the Sahara’ as it is known, which hints at it’s former importance as a trading post on the caravan routes of old, had few distractions for a solo cyclist like myself. I spent little more than 24 hours in town and fairly evenly divided this time between [...]

Climbing the argan tree The landscape from Essaouira to Agadir was dominated by the Argan tree, which is indigenous to this region and similar to the olive tree. I passed the occasional shepherd by his flock of goats, who seem to find the fruit a plentiful delicacy. The goats could be seen not only reaching [...]

Having survived the desert, I was dropped off in Rissani – a small, friendly town with little to distinguish it except that it lies practically on top of the site of Sijilmassa, the fabled city that was a thriving commercial centre at the head of the trans-saharan gold trade routes. As has become customary, within [...]