The question I’ve been asked the most about this chapter of my life is quite simply: “Why?”
And it’s a fair question. Why would anyone choose to spend 7 months of their life pedalling alone across a continent?
Before I started this adventure I got pretty good at giving a list of answers that I thought people would find plausible: ‘I want to explore new parts of the world, travel in a new way slowly through countries and engage more intimately with the landscapes and cultures, and face new challenges and overcome them’ etc. etc.
But to be totally honest, when I decided to take on this journey, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the ‘why’. I felt constrained by the bubble I was living in and the intense pressure of a busy life. One night around Christmas 2022 I was brainstorming things I could do after finishing university, and while scrolling on Google maps I just thought “fuck it, I’m going to cycle to Cape Town.” And that was that. It sounded awesome and challenging and a totally different way of living to my current situation.
Often when people incredulously asked “why?”, they immediately followed this with “wow, I wish I had done something like that when I was your age”. And that reassured me that I wouldn’t go on to regret this in the slightest, even if I hadn’t quite figured it all out in my head.
I had never ridden clip-in pedals. I had never been on a ride longer than maybe 30km in my life, let alone do anything resembling bikepacking. I didn’t even particularly like cycling – I rode my bike around university, but I never went on bike rides for the fun of it. In my mind that was a complete waste of time.
And yet there I was committing all the savings I’d been able to build up and the next 7 months of my life to an adventure I’d dreamed up pretty much on a whim.
17,000+ kilometres later, I’m still not sure if I even like cycling that much. But I don’t regret a thing.
December 2022
Just before Christmas I was in a cottage in the Lake District with my family, and on long cold walks I found myself daydreaming about crazy adventures I could do after finishing my degree and starting work, making the most of that last opportunity while I was still young and healthy, and not tied down by the responsibilities of a job, family, or mortgage.
I was one term into my Masters’ degree, feeling the claustrophobia of the tiny academic and social bubble I’d spent the last 3.5 years surrounded by. I also felt fearful of starting a career and getting stuck on the corporate ladder, squeezing as much as I possibly could out of my 25 days holiday a year. I wanted to fully experience freedom before I finally joined the working world.
One evening I stayed up late on my laptop, zooming into different parts of the world on Google Maps and thinking up wild adventure ideas.
A few drinks in and I found myself looking at Africa, and drawing a line down the West Coast of the continent from Morocco to South Africa. “That would be incredible,” I thought to myself. “what about on a bike? I wonder if that’s even possible, has anyone ever done it, and how long would it take?” I was instantly obsessed with the idea.
I knew I would have around 200 days to play with before my job started in April 2024. With some rough estimation I guessed it would be roughly 18,000km total: 180 days of 100km a day, and 20 days rest. Easy peasy, right?
I did a couple of hours of googling, and found a couple of articles and blogs of people who had done a similar route in the past (a particular shoutout to JB on his blog https://freewheely.com/, who made me believe this dream was feasible and gave a really practical starting point with an insanely well-detailed documentation of his route, equipment, and expenses). I went to bed with my mind set on this challenge, and when I came downstairs in the morning, I told my brother “I’m going to cycle to Cape Town next year.”
His reply was short and brutal: “No you’re not.”
That was all I needed. I told all my friends over the coming weeks I would cycle to Cape Town once I graduated, in an attempt to tie my hands: as a matter of pride, I would have to at least attempt it. I may only get to Spain, but I had told too many people to back out of it.
And that was that.
Why Africa?
Africa has played a big part in my life, shaping who I am in many ways. My childhood up to the age of 8 was spent in Malawi, a small but beautiful land-locked country in the South-East of the continent. Many of my most formative memories happened while we were there: climbing mountain ranges, exploring wildlife reserves, visiting the lake, and playing in garden and with the local kids. My first memory of riding a bike and learning to cycle without stabilisers were in our back garden and the dirt roads around our house. Those years hugely shaped my perspective of the world, and Malawi was the first place I consciously knew to be home.
I was lucky enough to visit Kenya for a summer and re-visit Malawi later on in my childhood, and when I was 19 I spent 5 months backpacking around some amazing countries: doing 2 months of research with a charity in Malawi, road-tripping through the deserts of Namibia, scuba-diving in Zanzibar, sailing around Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, and learning to freedive in Egypt.
Those happy childhood memories in particular have always made me feel drawn to that particular warm, beautiful chaos, and so it felt like a natural next-step to explore West Africa. Just this time, I would be alone and on a bicycle.
Why Cycling?
As I mentioned at the start of this post, I was not someone who particularly enjoyed cycling, and I had absolutely no experience of long-distance cycling. And yet, the novelty of it made it all the more appealing. I was drawn to the idea of travelling under my own pedal power, travelling far enough each day to make a long distance journey feasible, but also being forced to travel slowly and not skip over the more mundane sections away from the tourist hotspots.
Ultimately, being honest with myself, as I cycling away from London on Day 1, and continued on through Europe, I wasn’t quite sure why I was doing what I was doing. But I was too busy doing the thing to worry about that small detail.
I didn’t know why I was there, but I knew that I figure out the ‘why’ on the journey.
On day 135 of my journey, over 10,000km down and deep in the Cameroonian jungle, suffering in the heat and with food poisoning after a couple of really tough weeks crossing Nigeria, I was still pondering that same question. I said out loud to myself for the very first time: “Rob, why are you doing this? This is totally stupid. You literally decided on a whim a year ago to spend 7 months of your life cycling the length of Africa by yourself, and you don’t even like cycling that much.” And then I looked around at the jungle, and thought back over everything I’d experienced over the last 4 months, and I realised: ‘you know what, yes, this is totally stupid, but it’s also totally awesome, and I’m going to look back on this in 60 years and tell my grandkids “yep, that was the coolest thing I ever did”’.
Yes. I faced some of the toughest and loneliest situations of my life on this journey. But also yes, I’ve grown so much as a person through these experiences, I absolutely loved the adventure, and I am so glad I decided on a whim to do this.
Maybe some of the best decisions we make in life are not always the ones we spend too much time thinking about. Was it ‘rational’? Almost certainly not. But it wasn’t foolish either.
It may have been a crazy, insane decision, but it is also the best decision I’ve ever made.
The highs, the lows and the simply surreal – I don’t regret a moment of it.
Final Reflections
Looking back two years on from this moment, I’m still not quite sure what led me to make this exact decision. However, those months alone on the road gave me the time and space for deeper introspection than I’d had before, away from the noise and busyness of life back home. Going through everything that I went through taught me new lessons about myself, and has in a sense given me some fresh understanding of who I am as a person and why someone like me would feel drawn to do something as crazy as this in the first place.
For better or worse, I realised that the achievement-driven environment I grew up in has meant I’ve always found it hard to be satisfied with what I’ve already done. Choosing the easy, comfortable option has rarely made me feel fulfilled for long. Being in the same environment and doing the same thing for too long leads to itchy feel and eventually turns into a craving to escape. I’m scared of just living life on the conveyor belt, following the path of least resistance and making choices based off ease and convenience.
I have always instinctively been drawn to climb trees, buildings and mountains, jump off cliffs and waterfalls, and freedive deep below the surface of the sea on one breath. Those same instincts are the same ones that created these thoughts of doing some huge epic adventure, and once the idea of London to Cape Town was in my brain I couldn’t let go of it.
I don’t fully understand it in a coherent sense, but I feel that maybe both of these things are related to something deeper. By nature or nurture, I am the kind of person who always finds themself chasing something more, finding excitement in putting myself in places and situations that are outside the safe, comfortable constraints and norms of modern society. Doing things that people tell me aren’t meant to be done. Not some much for attention or external validation, as great as those things are, but for the feeling of escaping, experiencing some new high, a rush that I feel shiver down my back.
Feeling alive.
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