listen to africa

Photographs from the start of the expedition (March and April 2009) as we pedalled down through Brittany, the Atlantic coast, Aquitaine and the Midi-Pyrenees in France. Photographs by Huw and Bex.

(New photos added on 25th April 2009.)

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Yesterday, somewhere along the Canal de Garonne in Aquitaine, we pedalled our one thousandth kilometre. It amazes me that all those little turns of the pedal really do add up, and suddenly you find you’ve nearly crossed a country. We booked ourselves into a hotel to celebrate, and Huw cooked a meal by firing up our stove in the bathtub.

We’re in vineyard country: the hillsides are covered with rows of stumpy vines and white-flowering plum orchards. We’ve seen bats and heard owls and woodpeckers. While we’ve had occasional glimmers of southern European warmth – dry-grassed and humming with insects – it’s mostly been cold and misty. Our efforts to enjoy the cold while it lasts collapsed when it dipped to minus five one night; we lay in our one season sleeping bags, watching ice form on the tent and willing Africa closer.

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