Take On Africa

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The big question (when you arrive is Cape Town after 20 months cycling nearly 25,000km) is ‘What next?’ Well, here’s the answer…. http://helenstakeon.com/blog/whats-next/ As you can see, I’ve set up a new website for my new adventures. I’ll keep this Take On Africa website live, but most things I post from now on will be […]

Leaving Freetown We had arrived in Freetown on the bustling streets of Kissy Road in the East End lined with stalls selling everything from second-hand shoes to fake Sony radios; and had navigated our way through the commercial district centred around the towering cotton tree, down along Congo Road and across the poor shanty district […]

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 […]

“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 […]

This is Africa After spending the best part of a week travelling through the desolate desert, arriving in Nouadhibou was an assault on the senses…. it felt like we had finally arrived in Africa: battered cars weaving down the dusty roads, swerving now and then to avoid an overloaded, donkey-pulled, rickety, wooden cart; the drivers […]

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!

For those who haven’t perhaps heard of the ‘Marathon des Sables’, it’s a gruelling 7-day race where the competitors effectively run a marathon every day for seven days, carrying all their supplies including water, across the Saharan desert. Why exactly anyone would enter this is quite a mystery to most. I mean, who in their […]

I’ve just returned from a great weekend away on a wilderness survival skills course. Now I must say, before the weekend, I was a little dubious as to how useful a course teaching the basics of wilderness survival and bushcraft would be for my Africa trip – no doubt it would be interesting, fun and […]