On blogging

"For this purpose I determined to keep an account of the voyage and to write down punctually everything we performed or saw from day to day, as will hearafter appear"

(Christopher Columbus)

As you may have noticed dear reader I am not being as punctual as the famous explorer, but do promise to keep bring in you the goods. I'm writing it on my iPhone from my tent mort nights or in my shady tree spots. The difficulty is finding WiFi to upload it with. 'Water' was finished of a few days ago but i've only just found the first internet since Maun (i'm in Rakops now) and there is no WIfi so I had to transcribe it all (tokk about three quarter of an hour) so apologies if posts are a little out of date. I'll try to keep them in the correct order though.

Thanks again for all your encouraging texts and emails. They really do help spur me on. I got a bit stung by my phone company today so may have to be a little less responsive from now on, but please don't think i'm not reading them I am (and they are free for me to recieve)

I will be returning on Sunday the 27th and was thinking of seeing who is about later that week either to go out for dinner (has to be chakalaka in Putney) or it there are loads interested perhaps just to a pub somewhere. Maybe the Wednesday or Thursday? So email me if you can make it and i'll start making a list in my journal.

Hope you all well. Thanks again for the support.

Steve

The longest day

This was the first day in Botswana. I crossed the border without
incident around half past seven (new time zone, I'm an hour ahead of
BST now so am on GMT)

Im afraid I wrote little this day. This is because it was so tough.
This time it wasn't the terrain but the distance and the monotony of
the roads. I covered 212km, which is only possible by getting going
early and stopping late with virtually no stops. If you're on long
straight roads with no views the monotony can be broken up a little with
regular stops to rest under trees and watch things go by. If you
keep still long enough out here all sorts of creatures start to come
out of their hiding places. I couldn't afford this luxury. I just had
to keep going. To make matters worse I'm now pretty sure my iPod was
stolen by airport baggage handlers. Unless it's in my bedroom at home
(Tommy, Zoe, Matt?) since I can't find it anywhere. I wasn't sure when
I would next get power so didn't feel able to listen to podcasts on
the iPhone.

In short today was nearly too much. I nearly gave up a few times. I
passed two towns on the map which turned out to be almost non-
existent. At least from a cyclists point of view. You see if I'm
covering a long distance I can't afford half an hour to detour a few
km down a side road and am forced to just press on, drinking warm salty water.
From the point of view of the mental battle one of the worst things I
did was around lunchtime. It was whilst checking out one such side road.
All I'd been able to find was a truck stop. The owner was there, but said he
wasn't opening for another half an hour (too long for me). As I plodded back
up to the tarred road one of the enormous lorries with a huge trailer slowly began pulling out alongside me. I
grabbed the tailguard and was pulled along for about ten metres. It
felt great (can I point out this was a side road - I was not cheating
- I have still cycled all the way) I was in two minds whether to hang on whilst he
picked up speed and get a free (though probably quite dangerous ride). Luckily perhaps the lorry in question pulled over for some reason and
didn't appear to be going any further for a while. I carried on, but
from then on was haunted by the power I'd felt in my hand when I'd
held the massive vehicle. Now I didn't just dream about food, sleep
and cold drinks, I also had to fight the dreams about grabbing passing
lorries.

The distance forced me to continue throught the heat of the
day. It was getting really tough. One of the emails I'd recieved
yesterday was from my friend Rakhee. She had a really tough time a few
years ago (much harder than my mere bike ride) and had sent me some of
the quotes which kept her going throught this. Rakhee they really
helped. For me the killer quote was Lance Armstrong's 'pain is
temporary, failure is forever' that meant I just could not stop.

I eventually reached Ghanzi, once again about two hours after dark.
I'd booked to camp at Thakadu lodge and was overjoyed to see the sign
by the road. I'd heard it was a great place, but as I turned down the
road to get to it I went straight into deep sand. The lodge was three
kilometers down this track. I couldn't do it. It was too much (yes I did
cry). I turned back onto the main road to head into Ghanzi to find a
place to stay. I hate doing this after dark. I get very scared.
Luckily there was a place about 500m down to road. I pulled in there.
Handed over money put up my tent and went to sleep. I ate nothing I
was too tired.

Once more into the dark night.

The evening at Ziegie's was great, but the beers were flowing as
I'm doing quite a bit of exercise when I say flowing I mean I had four,
or maybe five and that was more than enough. Consequently I didn't
exactly leap from my bed come next morning. Jan, who was still up and
extolling the carbohydrate virtues of beer for cyclists when I'd made
my excuses and went to bed, was already up and finishing his breakfast.
He was definitely the better man. CJ and Tarryn were long gone, off to
interview farmers. I savoured my breakfast and drank coffee on the
veranda watching the road go by. Eventually I had to leave. Finally
today I was off to the border, but was once again late onto the road.

You may recall the old trout at the airport who wasn't happy with my
intended accomodation consiting of either a train or a tent. She
appeared to consider it her job to attempt to prevent foreigners
(particularly the English - her words not mine) entering her country,
even though like as not her own job probably only existed as a
consequence of my comrades and me. Well, I did not want a repeat with
her Botswanan cousin (I'm not sure exactly what her strategy could be
'I tell you what you have ten minutes or I put you on the first
bicycle back to Namibia' Hmm I guess I'd end up being there for some
time then!) so knew I'd need internet access at some point today in
order to find such an address. The only option was likely to
be Gobabis (the place I'd feared to push on to the previous night).
Jan gave me directions for the better Internet cafes, plus told me
about the San cultural centre (the San were one of the aspects of my
journey I'd really wanted to learn more about). Sadly both were
closed, not sure why, it wasn't a Satuday afternoon this time. I
did instead find quite a posh looking country lodge/hotel type place
with swimming pool, and tennis courts, which definitely looked much
cooler with the powerful one propped aside it's main entrance leering
at new arrivals. I did what I needed to do and drank two cokes with
ice (sorry LSHTM) and two vases of ice cream with chocolate sauce. Mmm.

Then I left... at 2pm... with 113km to cover...

Bugger!

I've been travelling pretty much due east since Swakupmond and by now
it's gettting dark at half five (Botswana will be in the next time
zone) By my reckoning if I could keep up 33km/hr for three and a half
hours (no breaks) I'd make the border by nightfall. This of course was
not going to happen. The question was how long I'd need to ride in the
dark. This time I would not be passing any towns and though I could
always camp by the road, as I had in the desert from what I'd heard
about this section I had more to fear from passing bandits spotting my
tent than lorries in the night (besides most of the lorries seemed to
have disappeared into a black hole in Gobabis and the road was now much
quieter, all the more ripe for banditry eh?!). Once more I realised
I'd need to cane it. When I had the wind with me I was able to get
upto 30km/hr and when it was against me I dropped to 20km/hr.
Unfortunately It was mostly against me and my average seemed to be working out
around 22km/hr. With stops to refill my water bottle and search
panniers for food to fuel my fire it was looking like I was in for
around 90 minutes in the dark. Sh*t!

I raced on, and I was racing, this had been expressly
forbidden by my insurance company, though perhaps competing against
celestial bodies doesn't count, just other humans. So I rode as fast
as I could into the gathering gloom. My sun shadow slowly drew away
from me with accelerating speed until even the part cast by my feet
was some way ahead of amd then finally it ceased to exist altogether,
to be replaced by it's more subtle blue twin cast by the moon.
Actually this was not so bad! The moon by now was three quarters full
and so brighter even than during the descent into Windhoek three days
earlier. In fact it never really became properly dark, just cool and
dim.

Still I wasn't keen on being out on my alone after dark on the savannah.
I needed to keep pressing on. By now I'd been going hard for about four
and a half hours and was beginning to tire. It was a mental battle to
keep pushing. I couldn't tell you how many times I must have stood up
out of the pedals and counted 100 then 200 then 300 kicks. Certain
songs kept going around and around in my head (luckily I don't know the Bony M song
of 'Touching the Void' fame). Robbie Williams 'Angels' and the Polynesian
Chants from 'The Thin Red Line' seemed top of my playlist for some
reason. With 30km to go I came up with a great idea. I'd bought some
small chewy sweets in Windhoek so I filled my cross-bar bento box with them. Rationing to one sweet every two km this made fifteen sweets,
didn't seem so far put like that. It was still an hour and a half until
I eventually pulled up to the campsite on the Botswanan border. I was
tired.

I put up my tent and cooked up some tasty rice with Biltong and dried
fishes and relaxed. It had been a long day and tomorrow was going to
be the longest of the trip. I was soon joined by some quite noisy
Germans who had just arrived from Maun (by 4x4) I enquired about the Botswanan roads. They told me the road was
long, straight and flat. After my experiences on the Bosua pass this
sounded great.

A final event which really made my day was when I I was finally lying in my sleeping bag with a full stomach and decided to check my emails. I'd
downloaded them whilst in Gobabis, but not had chance to look at them until now.
It was really great lying in my sleeping bag reading all the positive
comments you've all been giving me, it really makes a difference on
a solo trip like this you know. I'd even got an email from Mark Beaumont the Guy
who holds the current record for cycling around the world. You may have
seen a BBC programme about him last year. He's currently riding the length of the Americas which will be on TV once he's done (i've linked his BBC blog on the right of mine). That was very cool.

So of to sleep ready and prepared for Botswana. Namibia done!

On cartography

I'm having difficulty accessing the map on google maps (the 'find out where i've been' one at the top of the page). It's publicly editable (though I think you may need to have a google account) so if anyone finds themselves with a free moment to either look up my latest twittered location (see right hand column) or just work out where I am from recent posts and add to the map, that would be really help full. I might even bring you back a pocket full of red sand!