A few days ago I met with two Ukrainians here on Zanzibar. Ruslan and Anna both began their bicycle journey in Addis Ababa and finished in Dar Es Salaam, although travelled independently for much of the way. I’ve met cyclists from many countries before, but never the Ukraine, so I decided to ask them some questions.

1)   Is cycle touring popular in the Ukraine?

Ruslan: ‘Not at all. I don’t know anyone from my country who is travelling by bicycle in places like Asia and Africa. I’m not a typical Ukrainian as I lived in China for some years. It is there that I became interested in cycle touring when I discovered the Crazy Guy on a Bike website.  Read more... (388 words, 4 images, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

‘Zanzibar: the old Arab town, like a brooch skilfully sculpted out of white stone, and further on forests of coconut palms, enormous, branching clove trees, and fields of corn and cassava, all of it framed by the brilliant sandy beach punctuated by aquamarine inlets in which bob flotillas of fisherman’s boats’ (Ryszard Kapuscinski)

When I opened my eyes the sight was familiar, although for a spilt second I thought I was still dreaming. I must have been tired to fall asleep with those stomach-churning waves.  Read more... (1693 words, 4 images, estimated 6:46 mins reading time)

Selecting 12 pictures for a calendar is never easy when you have hundreds to choose from. I’ve given it a go and made a calendar from The Big Africa Cycle. If you’d like to order one please get in touch. I’m offering these at just over £10 for UK delivery (including postage) and £11 for Europe (£13 for the rest of the World).

The A3 calendar can be viewed HERE (photos are A4 size). Each photo is printed on high-quality laminated gloss paper. Images chosen for the calendar are as follows:

January

 Read more... (105 words, 12 images, estimated 25 secs reading time)

We were somewhere over the Niassa province of Northern Mozambique when the tears welled up in my eyes. The map on the inflight computer screen started to bring up names that triggered memories: Harare, Blantyre, Nampula, Lake Malawi. I knew that directly below me in the darkness, mostly between those place names, was an Africa that most of my fellow passengers had never really seen.

 Read more... (1198 words, 6 images, estimated 4:48 mins reading time)

A few months ago in Namibia I was able to speak over the Internet to a fellow Geography alumni from University, who produced this podcast for a storytelling project entitled The World We Live In. If you feel like hearing me ramble on, about both my former A Long Ride Home trip and The Big Africa Cycle, have a listen here.

Coming back to the present, I almost reached my £15,000 fundraising target for the end of the journey when I flew back to England yesterday. It would be great to see the remaining  £144 topped up before the next blog post  Read more... (137 words, 1 image, estimated 33 secs reading time)

Table Mountain should have been visible on the horizon. Cape Town’s most distinguishing landmark, that famous flat-topped peak signalling the bottom of the continent, and the end of The Big Africa Cycle, would have made for a great picture-taking backdrop as I pushed south from Langebaan.

 Instead the rain came down and my not-so-waterproof jacket proved ineffective on the R27 to Cape Town. This was the busiest road I’d been on in South Africa, and I was right to think that the hard-shoulder on South African roads is neither for cyclists nor emergency breakdowns, but for vehicles to move into whilst being overtaken.  Read more... (1757 words, 8 images, estimated 7:02 mins reading time)

Almost there now. About 120km separate me from Cape Town and the end of the Big Africa Cycle. Or is that the end? Surely I should pedal to Cape Agulhas? That after all is Africa’s southern most point, and doesn’t everyone else who overlands the length of Africa finish here? Except I won’t really be finishing there as I will have to cycle back towards Cape Town, which is kind of less appealing. Apparently Cape Agulhus does have a good Fish and Chip shop though – surely worth cycling another 350km for?

 Read more... (1390 words, 15 images, estimated 5:34 mins reading time)

There’s too much to write about in this blog post. I’m currently sat in a restaurant in Springbok, South Africa, wearing the warmest clothes I have. The temperature outside is about 10 degrees Celcius and I doubt it will get much warmer in the days to come. “You’ve arrived at the wrong time of year”, says Jan, the restaurant manager whose house I was invited to stay in last night.  Read more... (283 words, 42 images, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

For those of you who probably never got to hear me being interviewed on Radio here in Windhoek last week, here is the recording. I’m off again tomorrow. Back on the gravel and heading south. Another two weeks and I should be crossing into South Africa.

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I first saw them standing in the queue at a supermarket check-out; two teenage girls buying a loaf of bread and some milk. In such modern surroundings it came as quite a shock. They looked like they’d walked off a ‘Lord of the Rings’ film set. There was the orange and oily skin, the long, thick, snake-like braids of hair, an over-powering and unpleasant body odour, and perhaps most noticeably of all, the absence of any clothing other than an animal-skinned loincloth.  Read more... (1294 words, 23 images, estimated 5:11 mins reading time)