We’ve been on the road for around six months now and I thought it was about time I updated the Choosing sound recording equipment for the expedition blog to mention some recent additions to our equipment , and to look at how the kit has performed so far.

In Europe, we made only a few recordings , concentrating instead on getting fit and getting to know the equipment. On arrival in Africa, we started recording in earnest, spurred on and inspired by the multitude of sounds that were less familiar to us.

As we’re both comparatively new to audio recording, it’s been a steep learning curve. Encouraged by the successes and learning lots from analysing the failures, we now feel a lot more confident, and the ratio between good and bad recordings is going in the right direction.

more »

One of the advantages of taking so much time off the bikes is that both Ramadan, which started just as we first arrived in St Louis, and the rainy season are nearing an end, meaning that, when we finally do leave, our cycling lives will be a lot easier. Ramadan ends this weekend, and we’ve been persuaded to extend our time off just a little bit longer to go around to a neighbour’s for the feasting and festivities.

One way or another, we’ve spent quite a bit of time in St Louis. So much so that this tiny island – with its cobbles and shutters and mosques and cathedral and tourist touts and tat shops – is starting to feel a little like home. We have a local shop, a favourite restaurant and a little group of acquaintances here. Like everyone else, we’re woken every morning at 4am by the drummer who walks through town to rouse sleepers so they can eat before sunrise and, like everyone else, we’re blasted by an alarming siren every evening, signalling that it’s finally time to eat again.

But there are plenty of reminders that we’re not quite like everyone else; here, we’re very much tourists, part of the throng that wanders the streets taking pictures of the picturesque colonial buildings in whose colonial courtyards people sleep, wash clothes, keep goats, pound millet and generally go about their lives.

more »

We were in St Louis when I last wrote and we’re in St Louis now, but we’ve been halfway around Senegal in the meantime – enjoying a holiday from our semi-permanent holiday, catching up with family (my brother and his girlfriend), picking up new microphones and generally getting to grips with the way things work – and sometimes don’t – in Senegal.

We spent most of the holiday in a wonderful and remote little camp by the Atlantic Ocean called Le Thiossane . Occasionally, we ventured out of the camp to cook on fires on the beach, visit the Bandia Reserve (where we recorded a white rhino and a flock of weaver birds ) or take a pirogue to an island. Mostly though, we divided our time evenly between eating copiously and sitting in an open sided hut, watching the sun rise / cross the sky / set over a salt water lagoon .

more »

The Mauritania/Senegal border crossing at Rosso is infamously one of Africa’s worst. We were prepared for scammers, pickpockets, thieves, fake officials in uniform and real officials angling for bribes, and we weren’t disappointed.

On the Mauritanian side, young men hang around the ferry port’s gates waiting for business to turn up. By business, I mean people. By people, I mean people like us, who don’t know how much it costs to take a bicycle on the ferry, whether there’s a fee for the exit stamp or exactly what the exchange rate between Mauritanian and Senegalese currencies should be.

We’re instantly surrounded and then clung to, limpet-like. When I walk to a shop, somebody comes with me, stands beside me and repeats (in French) everything I say (in French) to the shopkeeper, then demands money for translating. We can say “no thanks” as much as we like but this group of men is certain that, at some point, one way or another, some amount of money will leave our possession and enter one of theirs.

They’re right. Eventually, we crack and change the remainder of our Mauritanian money with them at what we know must be a terrible rate. Entering the ferry port, we shake the touts but are charged a fictional fee for our exit stamps by the Mauritanian border guards. Then we buy tickets to take our bikes on the ferry, and we’re charged for quarter of a tonne each (our bikes are heavy but…). All in all though, we only lose around six Euros. “This is the nice side,” Huw explains.

more »

Late one night in Nouakchott, the inky skies opened and emptied themselves onto the roof of the little hut we were staying in. Some natural phenomena are so impressive that you have to say them out loud (especially if you’re British and the phenomenon is weather-related). Thus, throughout the Sahara, there was no limit to the number of times we could say “Hot, isn’t it?” and thus, when the wall of water hit our Nouakchott roof and woke us up, we both, simultaneously, shouted: “Rain!”

While we said the same thing, it turned out we were thinking very different thoughts. I was thinking “Rain! Brilliant!” and ran outside to enjoy the unusual and unexpected drenching. Huw was thinking “Rain! Expensive electrical stuff!” and ran around packing up the mess that creeps out of our panniers to take over the floor whenever we’re freed from the confines of our tiny tent. Within minutes, two inches of water sloshed around the floor and lapped at the hut’s walls – a taste of the weather to come in West Africa.

We cycled out of Nouakchott a couple of days later, past a French friend riding his newly acquired donkey and cart which he plans to drive to Senegal, past the goats and the pot holes, past the hawkers and pedallers of mint and sunglasses and T-shirts, past the markets and the bidonvilles and the whole crazy sprawl of this vast city, which was haphazardly invented 50-odd years ago when Mauritania, hurtling towards independence, decided it needed a capital. Or, at least, a city.

more »

The fourth in our “ in numbers ” series: how many visas we bought for Mauritania, hours we spent chasing silent donkeys, accidents we had and other vital statistics from our time in Mauritania. (You can view all posts from Mauritania here .)

4437 kilometres cycled so far
1000 kilometres travelled by public taxis to extend our visas
369 kilometres cycled in Mauritania
187 wagons on the ore train we recorded
54 degrees Centigrade – estimated temperature in Atar (Choum was hotter!)
52.7 kilometres – average daily distance, on cycling days
27 nights in hotels / auberges / hostels
26 rest days
11.18 kilometres – average daily distance, including rest days
7 cycling days
7 roadkill cows spotted
7 species of unidentified birds recorded
7 ice creams consumed (Huw 4, Bex 3)
6 visas bought for Mauritania (3 each)
3 hours spent trying to record silent donkeys!
3 days – length of the visa we were issued at the border
3 monitor lizards spotted
2 roadkill donkeys
2 nights in campsites
2 nights wild camping
2 nights “sleeping” on the train / in taxi stations
2 lifts in vehicles to escape the heat of the Adrar region
2 broken bikes
2 air conditioned rooms
2 punctures (Huw)
2 SIM cards purchased
1 new front rack (”the juggernaut”)
1 roadkill camel
1 hit by car (Bex)
1 train journey
1 camel slaughtered in front of us
0 Mediterranean monk seals spotted

Belatedly, here’s the third in our “ in numbers ” series: what we ate, where we slept, how much we cycled and how many squashed lizards we saw in Western Sahara. (You can view all posts from Western Sahara here .)

1047 kilometres cycled in Western Sahara (4068 total)
135 kilometres cycled on the longest day
104.7 kilometres – average daily distance, on cycling days
31.7 kilometres – average daily distance cycled, including rest days
27 nights in hostels/hotels/auberges
23 rest days
19 number of those rest days spent waiting for parcel
10 litres – average amount of water consumed on cycling days between two
10 cycling days
9 hours spent downloading junk emails
10 kilograms of goat eaten
6 kilograms of camel eaten
5 nights wild camping
3 squashed lizards
2.5 hours spent trying to find the @ and # symbol on Franco-Arabic keyboards
1 night in campsites
1 notebook (laptop) purchased
1 small rodent (gerbil) in tent
1 new email address (Huw)
1 wedding gatecrashed
0 punctures

The good news: We’ve reached Nouakchott in southern Mauritania, just a couple of hundred kilometres away from Senegal and sub-Saharan Africa. (And beer.)

The bad news: We didn’t make it here under our own steam. Twenty kilometres out of Atar, my front rack – presumably weakened by the journey on the iron ore express and the roof rack – decisively died. On careful inspection, we pronounced it officially FUBAR , so it’s now being an abstract sculpture on a Saharan roadside. (I call it “Transience: a meditation on the importance of fixing weak components before you get to the middle of the world’s largest hot desert, in whose infrequent villages neither cycling nor welding are passtimes of choice”.)

more »

Sketch by Isabel, Sketching in Mauritania and posted on Urban Sketchers .

A full update is coming soon but, for now, I just wanted to post these sketches of us in the Auberge Sahara, Nouakchott. They’re by Isabel, a Portuguese painter and sketcher living here in Nouakchott (and working at the Auberge Sahara) and whose website, Sketching in Mauritania , is full of wonderful sketches of Mauritania’s people and landscapes. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Sketch by Isabel, Sketching in Mauritania .

When I’m writing a blog, I normally write as much as I want to and then delete half of it in a desperate attempt to get it down to a length that people might actually read. This time, Huw suggested posting the full version so, with apologies (blame Huw), here it is – a 3800 word blog on 36 hours (is that a record?).

But keep reading! There’s an overnight train journey through the Sahara in an iron ore wagon, a failed attempt at cycling through the desert, paralysing heat, black eyes, and the kindness of a Mauritania we’re just starting to get to know:

Sunday, 1.30pm: We cycle to Nouadhibou’s train station – a three-sided shelter – in good time for the train which some people say comes at 3.30pm and others say 6.30. We sit on the floor, among the other would-be travellers. We wait. The sun moves across the floor of the building. Every now and then, little groups inch out of its glare in unison.

And we wait. We listen to the four Senegalese women selling food and drinks arguing among themselves. Occasionally, mid-argument, they all collapse into laughter – presumably at some insult one them has conjured up.

Sunday, 4.30pm: We wander outside for a change of scene. A man introduces himself and invites us for a walk over some boulders to look at a stretch of beach – empty and pristine apart from a couple of dozen shipwrecks.

more »

We’ve been on the road for around six months now and I thought it was about time I updated the Choosing sound recording equipment for the expedition blog to mention some recent additions to our equipment , and to look at how the kit has performed so far.

In Europe, we made only a few recordings , concentrating instead on getting fit and getting to know the equipment. On arrival in Africa, we started recording in earnest, spurred on and inspired by the multitude of sounds that were less familiar to us.

As we’re both comparatively new to audio recording, it’s been a steep learning curve. Encouraged by the successes and learning lots from analysing the failures, we now feel a lot more confident, and the ratio between good and bad recordings is going in the right direction.

more »

One of the advantages of taking so much time off the bikes is that both Ramadan, which started just as we first arrived in St Louis, and the rainy season are nearing an end, meaning that, when we finally do leave, our cycling lives will be a lot easier. Ramadan ends this weekend, and we’ve been persuaded to extend our time off just a little bit longer to go around to a neighbour’s for the feasting and festivities.

One way or another, we’ve spent quite a bit of time in St Louis. So much so that this tiny island – with its cobbles and shutters and mosques and cathedral and tourist touts and tat shops – is starting to feel a little like home. We have a local shop, a favourite restaurant and a little group of acquaintances here. Like everyone else, we’re woken every morning at 4am by the drummer who walks through town to rouse sleepers so they can eat before sunrise and, like everyone else, we’re blasted by an alarming siren every evening, signalling that it’s finally time to eat again.

But there are plenty of reminders that we’re not quite like everyone else; here, we’re very much tourists, part of the throng that wanders the streets taking pictures of the picturesque colonial buildings in whose colonial courtyards people sleep, wash clothes, keep goats, pound millet and generally go about their lives.

more »

We were in St Louis when I last wrote and we’re in St Louis now, but we’ve been halfway around Senegal in the meantime – enjoying a holiday from our semi-permanent holiday, catching up with family (my brother and his girlfriend), picking up new microphones and generally getting to grips with the way things work – and sometimes don’t – in Senegal.

We spent most of the holiday in a wonderful and remote little camp by the Atlantic Ocean called Le Thiossane . Occasionally, we ventured out of the camp to cook on fires on the beach, visit the Bandia Reserve (where we recorded a white rhino and a flock of weaver birds ) or take a pirogue to an island. Mostly though, we divided our time evenly between eating copiously and sitting in an open sided hut, watching the sun rise / cross the sky / set over a salt water lagoon .

more »

The Mauritania/Senegal border crossing at Rosso is infamously one of Africa’s worst. We were prepared for scammers, pickpockets, thieves, fake officials in uniform and real officials angling for bribes, and we weren’t disappointed.

On the Mauritanian side, young men hang around the ferry port’s gates waiting for business to turn up. By business, I mean people. By people, I mean people like us, who don’t know how much it costs to take a bicycle on the ferry, whether there’s a fee for the exit stamp or exactly what the exchange rate between Mauritanian and Senegalese currencies should be.

We’re instantly surrounded and then clung to, limpet-like. When I walk to a shop, somebody comes with me, stands beside me and repeats (in French) everything I say (in French) to the shopkeeper, then demands money for translating. We can say “no thanks” as much as we like but this group of men is certain that, at some point, one way or another, some amount of money will leave our possession and enter one of theirs.

They’re right. Eventually, we crack and change the remainder of our Mauritanian money with them at what we know must be a terrible rate. Entering the ferry port, we shake the touts but are charged a fictional fee for our exit stamps by the Mauritanian border guards. Then we buy tickets to take our bikes on the ferry, and we’re charged for quarter of a tonne each (our bikes are heavy but…). All in all though, we only lose around six Euros. “This is the nice side,” Huw explains.

more »

Late one night in Nouakchott, the inky skies opened and emptied themselves onto the roof of the little hut we were staying in. Some natural phenomena are so impressive that you have to say them out loud (especially if you’re British and the phenomenon is weather-related). Thus, throughout the Sahara, there was no limit to the number of times we could say “Hot, isn’t it?” and thus, when the wall of water hit our Nouakchott roof and woke us up, we both, simultaneously, shouted: “Rain!”

While we said the same thing, it turned out we were thinking very different thoughts. I was thinking “Rain! Brilliant!” and ran outside to enjoy the unusual and unexpected drenching. Huw was thinking “Rain! Expensive electrical stuff!” and ran around packing up the mess that creeps out of our panniers to take over the floor whenever we’re freed from the confines of our tiny tent. Within minutes, two inches of water sloshed around the floor and lapped at the hut’s walls – a taste of the weather to come in West Africa.

We cycled out of Nouakchott a couple of days later, past a French friend riding his newly acquired donkey and cart which he plans to drive to Senegal, past the goats and the pot holes, past the hawkers and pedallers of mint and sunglasses and T-shirts, past the markets and the bidonvilles and the whole crazy sprawl of this vast city, which was haphazardly invented 50-odd years ago when Mauritania, hurtling towards independence, decided it needed a capital. Or, at least, a city.

more »

The fourth in our “ in numbers ” series: how many visas we bought for Mauritania, hours we spent chasing silent donkeys, accidents we had and other vital statistics from our time in Mauritania. (You can view all posts from Mauritania here .)

4437 kilometres cycled so far
1000 kilometres travelled by public taxis to extend our visas
369 kilometres cycled in Mauritania
187 wagons on the ore train we recorded
54 degrees Centigrade – estimated temperature in Atar (Choum was hotter!)
52.7 kilometres – average daily distance, on cycling days
27 nights in hotels / auberges / hostels
26 rest days
11.18 kilometres – average daily distance, including rest days
7 cycling days
7 roadkill cows spotted
7 species of unidentified birds recorded
7 ice creams consumed (Huw 4, Bex 3)
6 visas bought for Mauritania (3 each)
3 hours spent trying to record silent donkeys!
3 days – length of the visa we were issued at the border
3 monitor lizards spotted
2 roadkill donkeys
2 nights in campsites
2 nights wild camping
2 nights “sleeping” on the train / in taxi stations
2 lifts in vehicles to escape the heat of the Adrar region
2 broken bikes
2 air conditioned rooms
2 punctures (Huw)
2 SIM cards purchased
1 new front rack (”the juggernaut”)
1 roadkill camel
1 hit by car (Bex)
1 train journey
1 camel slaughtered in front of us
0 Mediterranean monk seals spotted

Belatedly, here’s the third in our “ in numbers ” series: what we ate, where we slept, how much we cycled and how many squashed lizards we saw in Western Sahara. (You can view all posts from Western Sahara here .)

1047 kilometres cycled in Western Sahara (4068 total)
135 kilometres cycled on the longest day
104.7 kilometres – average daily distance, on cycling days
31.7 kilometres – average daily distance cycled, including rest days
27 nights in hostels/hotels/auberges
23 rest days
19 number of those rest days spent waiting for parcel
10 litres – average amount of water consumed on cycling days between two
10 cycling days
9 hours spent downloading junk emails
10 kilograms of goat eaten
6 kilograms of camel eaten
5 nights wild camping
3 squashed lizards
2.5 hours spent trying to find the @ and # symbol on Franco-Arabic keyboards
1 night in campsites
1 notebook (laptop) purchased
1 small rodent (gerbil) in tent
1 new email address (Huw)
1 wedding gatecrashed
0 punctures

The good news: We’ve reached Nouakchott in southern Mauritania, just a couple of hundred kilometres away from Senegal and sub-Saharan Africa. (And beer.)

The bad news: We didn’t make it here under our own steam. Twenty kilometres out of Atar, my front rack – presumably weakened by the journey on the iron ore express and the roof rack – decisively died. On careful inspection, we pronounced it officially FUBAR , so it’s now being an abstract sculpture on a Saharan roadside. (I call it “Transience: a meditation on the importance of fixing weak components before you get to the middle of the world’s largest hot desert, in whose infrequent villages neither cycling nor welding are passtimes of choice”.)

more »

Sketch by Isabel, Sketching in Mauritania and posted on Urban Sketchers .

A full update is coming soon but, for now, I just wanted to post these sketches of us in the Auberge Sahara, Nouakchott. They’re by Isabel, a Portuguese painter and sketcher living here in Nouakchott (and working at the Auberge Sahara) and whose website, Sketching in Mauritania , is full of wonderful sketches of Mauritania’s people and landscapes. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Sketch by Isabel, Sketching in Mauritania .

When I’m writing a blog, I normally write as much as I want to and then delete half of it in a desperate attempt to get it down to a length that people might actually read. This time, Huw suggested posting the full version so, with apologies (blame Huw), here it is – a 3800 word blog on 36 hours (is that a record?).

But keep reading! There’s an overnight train journey through the Sahara in an iron ore wagon, a failed attempt at cycling through the desert, paralysing heat, black eyes, and the kindness of a Mauritania we’re just starting to get to know:

Sunday, 1.30pm: We cycle to Nouadhibou’s train station – a three-sided shelter – in good time for the train which some people say comes at 3.30pm and others say 6.30. We sit on the floor, among the other would-be travellers. We wait. The sun moves across the floor of the building. Every now and then, little groups inch out of its glare in unison.

And we wait. We listen to the four Senegalese women selling food and drinks arguing among themselves. Occasionally, mid-argument, they all collapse into laughter – presumably at some insult one them has conjured up.

Sunday, 4.30pm: We wander outside for a change of scene. A man introduces himself and invites us for a walk over some boulders to look at a stretch of beach – empty and pristine apart from a couple of dozen shipwrecks.

more »