Preparations and Random Practicalities
Some of you fair readers, possibly into double figures by now, might be interested in how you prepare for a trip, a little outside the everyday. I've done two longish bike-rides now which have taught me some useful things like, a) you start to feel shagged out around day 3 and b) an excruciating soreness soon develops in that complicated area between your inner thighs. The first long trip was to Gabriel and Eva's splendid wedding in 2006.  This was from our back door to Reutte in the Austrian Tirol, accompanied by John Mitch, and was approx 800 miles. The second was from Calcutta to the foot of Kanchenjunga in Sikkim a year later. The latter was probably better preparation because of the lack of infrastructure for anyone on a fancy western bike and the relative poverty of the country crossed. Suffice it to say that these two rides were possibly the best prep for my forthcoming ride. 

It'd be a good idea to learn basic Swahili which is a ligua franca  right across southern Tanzania and much of the rest of east Africa. So far, with about 9 days to go, I can say Jambo! (Hi!). Not to be confused with jamba which means "fart".  So I'll be the Englishman speaking mainly English. Not a problem as each of the four countries has English as at least one of its official languages. You are better off with Afrikaans or German in Namibia. Zambia has approx 73 different languages.

Then there are the medical practicalities. Do you have the rabies jabs? Will they ask for a yellow fever certificate as you enter Zambia from Tanzania? In the end I had both and Hepatitis B, at some expense. Rabies jabs alone cost about £200.00 . Other jabs were still valid from previous trips. The jabs were almost made a pleasant experience because of the charming and humorous Singaporean lady who administered them and who is one of the NHS's many gems. To get the jabs I cycled over the hill to Little Horton in Bradford. I took different routes each time and the things I saw say a lot about the pleasure of cycling. You've time to notice stuff. What an interesting road Great Horton Road is at 5 mph, with its muddle of old stone properties and their myriad small businesses, stretching up the hill to Queensbury. (In the autumn, if anyone fancies a boozy walk from Queensbury to Bradford, calling at every pub for a swifty, then I'm your man). Then there is the new pink-stone mosque on Horton Park Avenue which is worth a detour if you are round that way.

Another place I noticed thanks to bike-speed was Barry Firth's cycle shop in West End, Queensbury. I did a u-turn and popped in to suss the place out. It turned out that it was Barry who fettled my bike ready for the trip. Watching as he built me a new back wheel and replaced all the drive, I learned a lot. So, fellow cyclists, if you need a friendly, helpful bike man, I would certainly recommend Barry Firth ( www.firthcycles.com). 

Another recommendation is Roland Huntsford's book Scott and Amundsen, The Last Place On Earth. It describes the different levels of preparation that the two men reached for their polar journeys. Amundsen could ski, had wintered in the Arctic with Inuit eople, knew how to dress for the cold, knew how to drive dogs etc. Scott, on the other hand, left a lot to chance despite a previous polar journey. I'd like to avoid certain events like those that happened on Scott's last trip: the time when one of his untried, petrol-driven snow-cats fell into the sea while being unloaded (the others didn't fare any better) ; the day he must have realised that his Siberian ponies were unsuited to the Antarctic and that they would have to haul the sledges themselves and then later, when he probably grasped that his men were on starvation rations. My preparation is probably closer to Scott's than Amundsen's, not that I'm comparing myself to either. And I admire them both. With normal luck my body and my bike should be up to the trip. However, just writing about it makes me nervous in case something unforeseeable goes wrong on Day 1 in the suburbs of Dar es Salaam and this blog and my trip grind to a humiliating stop.

I suppose the things that make me most nervous are - how shall I put it? - my arse, an unfixable bike scenario and health problems.

I cycled about 35 miles last weekend and developed a pressure sore. When I got the shaving mirror out and inspected more closely I discovered a red, glistening sore about 1 cm across right where my scrotum meets the top of my leg. Sorry if that's too much detail. The thought of doing 4500 kms with that getting worse every day is alarming. Hopefully it was just a maliciously placed seam in my Millet's trousers.  

Then there are careless , bored baggage-handlers at the end of a shift who might toss my boxed bike to the bottom of a pile of 15 heavy suit-cases. Result : it looks like the tin of unopenable peaches in  Three Men in a Boat, a shape unknown to geometry and too hideous to behold.

But all that could be just pre-trip pessimism. I generally find that such trips are full of happy surprises, usually involving the people you meet. Or maybe I've just been lucky,like Amundsen. If I was a betting man - I'm not - I'd say my chances of cycling the distance were just a bit better than 50/50.

The Plan

So the plan is to fly to Dar es Salaam on June 1^st and to fly back from Walvis Bay on August 15^th. According to Michelin, it’s approx  4400 kms between these two places by the route I’ll describe shortly. Cycling every day, that would be about 63 kms or 39 miles per day. If I have 20 days “off”, then it’s 50 miles a day on cycling days. Most of the route is flat and the roads are generally  well paved from what  I’ve read in various places  –  mostly the internet  –  so 50 mile days should be OK.

Research regarding the weather suggests that it should be mostly dry and warm (between 10 and 25 degrees C) as it’ll be winter down there then. Pressure would normally be high so nothing too blowy i.e. more or less what you want for cycling. The exceptions will be on the Indian Ocean coast at the start where it’ll be quite a lot hotter and in  Namibia, which is (semi) desert mostly, and  frosty at night.

The warm English summer’s day temperatures are partly down to the altitude of the route, which is mostly between 3000 and 5500 feet and the fact that it’s winter. A summer trip (southern hemisphere) would be hotter, stickier and wetter.

I’m taking a tent but will opt for roofed accommodation where possible.

An option was to do the trip with wife Judith on our tandem, and the invitation was there, but after considering it for a few milliseconds she decided against it.

The route

Friends Rob Pawson and young Earnshaw of Wight have asked recently about the route, so please get out your Weetabix World Atlas.

It covers 4 countries in this order: Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Namibia. From Dar es Salaam there is a main road to Mbeya (where friend Paul Cunningham was born and spent his early childhood)  in the South West of the country. This is technically uphill as Mbeya is at 5500 feet. From there it’s south through the mountains and downhill to the northern end of Lake Malawi which is at about 1500 feet. It’s Lake Nyasa on some maps. I’ll follow the western shore of the lake for about two-thirds of its length then turn west towards Chipata in the SE corner of Zambia. Chipata is where friends John and Christine Priestley spent 3 years in the 70s. John was a VSO volunteer. From there the road goes west to Lusaka then SW to Livingstone and Victoria Falls. From there it’s west again to the panhandle bit of Namibia known as the Caprivi Strip. The last few hundred miles is the road SW from  Rundu , through Groetfontein and on to the coast at Walvis Bay. At least that’s the plan.  Circumstances and possible side trips or local recommendations might dictate a different outcome.