Done it !

Wow! Made it! Another wow !

At 7 am this fine sunny Sunday morning I strutted from my 5-star B and B in Hafenstrasse, Swakopmund, down to the beach - only 100 yards away - removed my sandals, rolled up my tracky bottoms and proceeded to bathe my legs (right up to the lower knee) in the mighty, thrashing Atlantic, just 70 days after a similar, though full-body ceremony, in the Indian Ocean. I then reversed all of the above and went for a large African - a bit like a full English - breakfast.

I planned to do all of the above (apart from the breakfast) yesterday afternoon, except that I arrived after dark, as tired as 10 men, bad tempered and ridiculously hungry. All celebrations were brushed aside while mental and particularly physical needs were attended to. These included a hot shower while drinking a cup of hot, sweet rooibos tea, a Thai meal - what a wonderfully cosmopolitan world we live in - and 8 hours between cotton sheets.

So, 70 days after leaving Dar es Salaam, and approx 1,000,000 turns of the pedal cranks, I managed my African coast-to-coast.

Thanks to Judith, my wife, for giving me an exceptionally long pass-out and for not making a fuss and worrying (unduely) when I said I was thinking of going cycling in Africa. Thanks to Fran Sandham for putting the idea in my head. Fran Sandham walked the route in the opposite direction. (Read his book "Traversa").

The last 2 days

That's "last" in both senses.

Friday was pretty straight-forward as I hoped it would be. I left the great, little town of Omaruru around 8 am and I was in Usakos, down the road 50 kms, then turn right for a further 30 km, by mid-afternoon.

The weather had changed subtely. The mountains were no longer sharply defined as if they were 10 yards away. This morning they had receded into a slightly milky haze. I'm not sure whether it was from dust blown in on the recent easterly winds or whether it was a real mist haze coming in on the current Atlantic breeze. You can't know everything, even in the digital age.

The highlight of the day, apart from sitting in a very comfortable chair at the Total filling-station cafe in Karibib, was spotting a family of 7 giraffes. Once again, like other spooked animals, they were running alongside the stock-fence that follows the road. They actually overtook me, only about 50 yds to my left. This is no great feat but they were running over very broken ground and probably doing 20 mph. Their run was effortless and graceful, not at all how I'd expected  giraffes to run. You'd have thought it was a slow-motion replay. It only lasted a few seconds but it was an unforgettable sight.

Freezing in the tropics

The last day, yesterday, about which I was naturally excited and nervous, was less of a breeze. In fact it ended in a head-on, pig of a gale.

Usakos is a small quarrying town (I think) that sits quietly in the bottom of a broad valley between mountains. Apart from the vegetation, the mountains remind me in shape and size of the the mountains of Snowdonia (North Wales). The peaks are about 2000m but the valley bottoms here are around 1000m.

I left around 6 am, which is first daylight. I swapped a hand-shake for a packed breakfast with the B and B owner, who then unlocked the gate for me in his pyjamas.

Several people, inc the B and B man, had warned me about the 25km hill before the long drop to the coast.

As I left Usakos I noticed with relief that the various "tourist" flags were flapping weakly towards the coast. And for the first time in weeks there were grey skies overhead and some of the peaks were poking into them, again reminiscent of UK mountains.

The hill is not so steep. It's arrow-straight and there are no hair-pins. I could see the sun rising behind me in my mirror as I pedaled steadily up. There were already a few cars on the road. It was a Saturday. The B2 is the  main (and only tarmac) road between Windhoek, the capital, and Swakopmund, one of the country's two sea-side resorts.

Brace yourself for a rant....Mercedes doing 90 mph on a two-lane road are bloody annoying when you are out for a peaceful bike ride. Why do people rush around so much? Slow down. Enjoy the journey. Look at the scenery. Don't kill yourself or anybody else. Get there 20 minutes later. You'll never notice the difference. Consume half the petrol. Buy yourself a nice ice-cream. Get there in one piece. Don't scare the shit out of cyclists, hedgehogs, meerkats etc . Sometimes I wish you'd have a front tyre puncture, roll over 15 times, scare the shit out of yourself and never dare speed again Rant! Rant! Rant! Phew! I needed that.....

Where was I? Oh yes. ...I was soon pealing off layers of clothes, helmet, ruc-sac etc and piling them on the back and thinking it was really a bit of a girls' hill.

Half way up though it started getting cool and some of the luggage mountain on the back transferred itself back onto me. It probably took 3 hours to reach the top where there's a desolate shanty town called "Crystal Mountain". Presumably they sell gems, minerals and stuff; I didn't investigate. You can turn off here on a dirt road if you have a suitable vehicle and head for the Spitzkoppe Mountains. I'd seen intriguing photos and paintings of these rocky peaks and I was disappointed that they were hidden in cloud.

I stopped for breakfast at the very top. A couple of articulated lorries drew up and their drivers, slapping themselves to keep warm out in the air, came over to check me out. They had "Maersk" containers on the back and were heading for Walvis Bay. They promised to flash their lights if they spotted me on the way back.

"I could've sworn that was rain" I thought as I peeled a boiled egg. Indeed it was. And the first rain in Africa (for me) for about 7 weeks. Even that was only for an hour in the night. It was the finest drizzle and odd, as I was in a very arid landscape.

Fortified with ham, cheese as well as eggs, I set off down the gentle 100km slope to Swakopmund. The drizzle increased, the wind was now in my face and it was suddenly bloody chilly. There is nowhere to hide on a bicycle, as you know, and after 30 minutes of this I was frozen. My drizzled-up glasses had to come off and I could feel the wet getting through my trousers and giving my knees an icy caress.. What with the wind and the cold, my brain was also losing its concentration. Is it the lack of blood?  I began to think how dreadful Antarctic explorers must have felt when their body heat started to drain away while still having to concentrate, calculate and keep moving.

One calculation I did make was, the lower I got, the warmer it would become. And yes, 30 minutes later the drizzle stopped and the air warmed up.. For the next couple of hours I went into confident mode.. There was now an increasing head-wind but that was cancelled out by the downhill slope. I was making 20 kms every hour, a good rate. Swakomund by mid afternoon was on the cards and a triumphant dip in the sea before drinking much beer and bragging about my achievement to anyone who would listen.

70 kms from Swakomund the landscape becomes full desert, brown and yellow sand and stones in every direction. With about 50 km to go, Roessing Mountain appears. It's a steep, rocky peak sticking out of the surrounding sandy plain. On a different day it would have been fun to go clambering around on it.. Not far away is Arandis, a collection of enormous industrial sheds associated with the Roessing  Uranium Mine. I stopped here for breakfast, part two.

50 km to go. Piece of cake! There was one last surprise though.  I felt tired as I left this stop, the road became flat and undulating, the road surface went irritatingly lumpy and, more significantly, the westerly wind became a gale. Freakishly, those last 50 km were the toughest of the whole 4,400 km. No exaggeration. I'd studiously avoided being knackered since Dar es Salaam. It's just not nice. On this day though, short of camping in a gale in the desert or down the aforementioned  uranium mine - probably not allowed -  it couldn't be otherwise. The last 50 km of road were mocking, bleak, heartless, ache-inducing, remorseless and so, so chuffing long.

The sun set around 5.30 pm and it was 6.30 before I reached the outskirts of Swakopmund. I blundered around the town before finding a B and B with a bed. I cycled up "the front" in the dark. It probably has some of the dearest property in Namibia and I could hear the waves hitting the beach but I could not see them. Anyway I had other priorities and couldn't give a toss for the symbolic journey's end.

Zzzzzzzz, fart, burp, zzzzzzzz. Phew !

If you have read thusfar, well done. Keep reading, there's a little more to come. Not home yet!