Merry Christmas from Senegal

Its hard to believe that its Christmas just a couple of days away whilst here the sun has been shining and the crazy life of a Senegalese fishing town goes on around me. I've been here a week now and it's going to be very hard to leave indeed.


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I have been made to feel very welcome amongst a crew of guys from Guinea Conakry who live together here in a small ecampermant on the beach just out of town. We've been Playing lots of music together and feasting on fine west african cooking involving mounds of rice and plenty of fish, I love it, and it's exactly where i wanted to be. But there is still a few hundred more kilometers to go befor i arrive in The Gambia and soon it will be time to hit the road again.

That one above is my christmas card to you.
Yes yes yes, to white sandy beaches and midwinter sun just a cycle ride away...

One of the high points of this week was a day in a pirogue out on the water casting the fishing nets and catching the most delicious fresh fish for that nights dinner. It was a little dream of mine whilst cycling here to go out in the boats and it was indeed a dream come true and a blissful day out fishing. I'm seriously thinking of a career change.

 

 

The fishing pirogues are some how so iconic for this part of the atlantic coast just like the dhows of East Africa and form the centre of activities in town. I hope to have the opportunity to spend many more days out with the fisherman and messing about in boats over the next month on the west coast.

So i would just like to wish every one a very merry Christmas and festive season where ever you may be. I hope that you enjoy your holidays and get a chance to connect with you're fanilly and loved ones. Who knows where i'll be but for sure it will be some where in Africa, just as i'd hoped.

Much love to one and all.

Ed

West Africa At Last

Well it's time for the next eciting installment of Ed's bycicle adventures and as you can imagine there are so many tales tell and i berely know where to begin.......

I'm in St Louis on the coast of Senegal.
Yes i made it across the desert  and now i have properly arrived in West Africa. I'm staying in a small encampment of musicians from Guinea Connackry on the beach. Living in rickety grass huts and spending the days playing music and hanging out. This is the life! and exactly what i hoped to be doing here. It's a fantasticly vibrant city on an island in the north of Senegal. It's one of the few places here with lovely old coloneal buildings left by the french, however crumbling they may be, and the place is buzzing with so much going on. This is essentially a fishing town and the water side is a crazy hive of activity building boats, mending nets, sorting, drying, smoking and seling fish. It stinks and to an English eye is absolute chaotic madness. Goats and sheep every where, children running about the place, horse carts, trucks, rubbish spread about everywhere, dirt, and every colour of the universe in the most fantastic dance of creation. I love it! I'll stay here for a liitle while so you'll get pics next time but here's a little taster:
Abduli making the all important Atire tea...

So How did i get here?
Well the last post i wrote in Boujdour in Western Sahara and the going was pretty tuff. Thankyou so much for those folk who left comments on reasons to do a journey of this sort. I found them all really inspiring and the last couple of weeks have been a huge learning experience for me. After a few more days cycling through the desert i was in a pretty good rhythm with it all. Long distances and endless emptyness. Most days had a hazy layer of cloud that kept the temperature down and created a mysteroius white washed effect over everything. I slept a couple of nights camped by service stations as there were no longer any towns along the way and continued to meet good people and largely enjoy life on the edge.

There were even the occasional signs to say i was heading in the right direction!

One afternoon a met a very friendly crew of guys living in tiny fishing huts nestled into the cliffs. These were pretty much the only people living in this part of the desert and they came from the city to work with the fishing for a couple of weeks at a time. We marvelled at one another for a while, drank tea together and i carried on my merry way.

That night i found myself i little unstuck as it was getting late and the service station i was hoping to get some supplies had nothing to offer. There was a campsight 30km further on but it would soon be dark and i was at a loss as to what to do. Just then a van pulled up with two French guys who offered me a lift in the right direction so i jumped on board with little idea as to how events would unfold. It turned out that they where heading to Bambako where Frank ran music projects for blind kids and that night we had a great little jam in the car park of a service station where we camped together. After that i found myself cought up in the flow of things. We were having a good time hanging out and had a lot in common including our route. I ended up excepting the offer of a lift to Nouakchott, the capital of Mauratania. I had had it in mind that i may take a lift of this part of the journey as it is this strectch of 450km of road where there have been kidnappings in recent years and the British foreign office advises against all travel. However if you were to allways follow their advice you would probably be to scared to laeve the front door. There was also a strong east wind blowing so i was happy to be cruising at speed in the van rather than battling the elements and risking dodgy encounters. Having said that I'm sure it would have been fine and infact i found myself feeling like i had missed out on part of the journey and let myself down. But what the heck i was having a good time and continued to hang out with these guys for a few days in Nouakchott playing music and enjoying the connection. I will checkout their projects when i reach Bambako, hopefully in a few months time.

It was as if someone had pressed a fast forward button for a few days of my journey and the xperience in the van answered many of my earlyer quetions as to why i wanted to travel by bike. It is indeed a completely different experience and people treat you in a very different way. I was very happy to get back on my bike for the 300 km across the remainder of Mauratania to where i am now in Senegal.

Entering Mauratania the desert begins to change straight away. First there is 4kms of "no-mans land" to cross after Morroco that belongs to neither country and is littered with abandoned vehicles and has no tarmac but a rough track winding it's way between the frontiers. There are also people looking to buy and sell vehicles or change money and ofcourse quite a scetchy vibe going on.

But once in Mauratania the desert is more inhabited with paople living in huts and Bedouin tents along the road side and for the first time in days there are actually trees and tufts of grass. Heards of camels, goats and even cattle start to appear and more and more villages along the way.

The Capital of Nouakchott is an incredible meeting of black West African cultures with the more Arab peoples of north Africa. There are people from Mali, Senegal, The Ivory Coast and all over, here to do some kind of business or other and the city has that chaotic West African feel thats going to be the norm from now on. One afternoon I paid a visit to the Gambian Embassy and had tea with the Ambassador who was expecting me as he is an Uncle to Lamin from the Fresh Start Foundation. It was lovely to meet the guys there and speak English and we had our photo taken together with the bike so hopefully i will have that soon to put up on this blog.

I have feeling that this post is probably just about long enough already so i'll draw it to a close now and tell you all about Senegal after i have been here for a little but here's a few pictures of the road south from Nouakchott to give you a taste of what a bike ride in this part of the world is like.

all the best to ona and all from the open road.
Ed

Plenty of time to my self.

This sure is a long road indeed and there ain't nothing i can do but just carry on peddling. Well, i could ofcourse jump on a truck and catch a lift for a few hundred kilometers and the thought has entered my mind many many times over the last few days. But i guess i must like the challenge, or maybe i'm just mad..... answers on a post card to......

But really, I have indeed wondered what this is all about, as you can imagine, and why anyone would embark on such a mission in the first place. I have my reasons, my big visions and motivations but it isn't allways easy keeping the vision in focus so i would love to hear from you as to what you think its all about. What does it mean to do a journey like this? Maybe I'm just looking for a bit of encouragement when the going gets tuff or perhaps it really is a total waste of time.... what do you reckon? Please leave a comment below.

And back to the blog;
I'm in Boujdour, another coastal desert town, and resting up for a day befor heading ever southwards. Now the distances are so epic i'm covering around 140km in a day which takes it out of you. So a day of rest was well needed.
The people here have been so friendly and welcoming as they have in all of southern Morroco. I'll sit in a cafe and moments later my neighbour will be chatting away with me asking questions of what i'm up to. I love the response and general disbelief when i explain that i have cycled from England and heading to The Gambia. There's a gentleness and relaxed way of being around here. The men seem to have all the time in the world to sit around in cafes and watch the world go by. What the women are up to, i don't know as most of them are hidden away probably making the world go round in far more usefull ways than us boys.

The road continues to follow the coast some of the time and then dip inland for a while where there really is very little variation in the landscape and continues to look mostly like this;

Thankfully there's not to much in the way of traffic passing this way but there are still plenty trucks and quite often they'll pass with the beeping of horns and waves of encouragement. This feels great untill the aftermath of a great force of hot wind mixed with sand and exhaust fumes hits me as i brace myself and hold course and the truck passes on. There are also the odd heard of camels and a few amusing road signs including;

..... clearly there is a danger of splashing water.....????

watch out for the sand.......
But my favourtite was this one;

When i saw this a become very excited that perhaps there maybe other cyclists on the road as i had not yet met any. A few kilometers later, or was it a hundred.... i realised that it must have been put there just for me and that made me feel much safer indeed.
and this one....

ohps

There are police checks all along the way aswell and the police have all been really friendly and equally bemused as to what I'm doing. One told me about someone thay had met once who was doing something similar for charity and i explained that i was doing the same however he was unimpressed when i told him how much i had raised so far. This got me to thinking about how to raise the profile of this trip and try to raise more cash for the Fresh Start foundation in The Gambia.

Firstly a massive thank you to those of you who have supported this project in all sorts of ways, only one of which is by donating cash. It would be great if any one would like to put it out on their own networks, have links on websites, or send twitters, of which i know nothing, or tell their rich friends or generally spread the word in anyway that works for you. when i reach the Project in the Gambia I'll send lots of pics and more info about whats going there which will help the whole thing make a bit more sense.
In the meantime big love to you all. I've got another 1000km of desert to cycle through befor Christmas.
Untill nexttime, here's another picture of some camels cause i love em,

All the best
Ed

Where the desert meets the sea

I'm 3 days into the desert now and it feels like a very long road to Mauratania.
A long, straight, flat road of empty desert with the pounding Atlantic Ocean on my right and the endless Sahara on my left. Its going to be at least a week of this but thankfully there are a handfull of towns and villages along the way to seek food and shelter, internet cafes and entertaining locals.
But a lot of the looks like this:

From Tafroute I headed west out of the mountains of the Anti Atlas to Tiznit and to the coast passing through Mirleft and Sidi Ifni. I stayed on a great little beach nestled into the cliffs but I can't remember the name of the place and it wasn't on my map, but some how i found myself there. From the cliffs huge red sandstone headlands jutted out to sea and over the years had been eroded into the most fantastic natural arches.

It was a secret little paradise with just a handfull of folk staying there and perfect to take it easy befor the long days cycling in the desert. These began from Guelmim heading south west to Tan Tan which was a dramatic ride through mountains and sandstorms with crazy winds cutting across the road blowing fine red dust over everything. But the ride was beautiful all the same.

That day also was my first propper meeting with the camels of the desert; first the road sign and the the real thing at watering time by the roadside.

I have got into a bit of routine now and a generally covering about 120 km each day on these flat roads and
as you can imagine i have so many photos i'd like to upload for your viewing pleasure but this computer is being so painfully slow that i think i've reached my threshold with technology for now so i'm gonna call it a night. Any way all the best from this little town of Tarfaya that already feels like the far ends of the earth but is only realy just the beginning of this long road across the Sahara.


Agra