What is this about?
Having never cycled further than the commute to work, we spent August 2011 cycling unsupported 2800km, coast to coast, across Southern Africa for Tusk Trust. We pedalled up mountains and between rolling hills, through frighteningly busy cities and across extradordinarily empty deserts. We laughed a lot and learnt a lot and were overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of the people we met along the way. Thanks so much for all of your support.
Why are we doing this?
A brief lapse of sanity? Very possibly. That and because years spent working and travelling in Africa have made us acutely aware of the pressures brought to bear on African wildlife and its increasingly fragmented and isolated habitat.
A rapidly expanding human population and a consuming demand for land and resources brings us into increasing and often disastrous conflict with wildlife. Population growth, commercialisation, environmental change, war, poverty and hunger are just some of the problems facing African communities. Finding ways to protect and conserve wildlife habitat, whilst meeting the needs of local communities is no easy task but sometimes solutions are out there.
A rapidly expanding human population and a consuming demand for land and resources brings us into increasing and often disastrous conflict with wildlife. Population growth, commercialisation, environmental change, war, poverty and hunger are just some of the problems facing African communities. Finding ways to protect and conserve wildlife habitat, whilst meeting the needs of local communities is no easy task but sometimes solutions are out there.
How will cycling across Africa help?
Whilst there may be slightly less exhausting ways to raise awareness for some fantastic conservation projects that are tackling these issues head on, we hope that you will support the significant challenge we set ourselves by giving generously to Tusk Trust.
Tusk is a truly excellent organisation with 20 years' experience initiating and funding conservation and community development programmes across Africa that continue to build a brighter future for both local communities and the wildlife with whom they share their environment. Tusk's overheads are small and its impact is big. For more information please click on the image of Africa above or click on About Tusk Trust at the top of the page.
Tusk is a truly excellent organisation with 20 years' experience initiating and funding conservation and community development programmes across Africa that continue to build a brighter future for both local communities and the wildlife with whom they share their environment. Tusk's overheads are small and its impact is big. For more information please click on the image of Africa above or click on About Tusk Trust at the top of the page.
Please lend your support by donating on our fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/lifecycleAfrica
We believe in taking responsibility for our own mad decisions which means the full cost of this adventure is being met by us.
100% of your donation will go to Tusk
100% of your donation will go to Tusk
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live." ~ Mark Twain
“If the place where we are is the place where nature is not then by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings and by definition can offer no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us....We leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honourable human place nature might actually look like.”
~ William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
“If the place where we are is the place where nature is not then by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings and by definition can offer no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us....We leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honourable human place nature might actually look like.”
~ William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature