27. The End of My Journey.

09.05.24 – 22.05.24 : Man – Abidjan

I‘d begun to dream about how my journey would end. I imagined an emotional exhalation – equal parts satisfaction and sadness. I dreamed of pure mental clarity, a consolidation of the road’s lessons. Perhaps I’d even have visions: a timeline stretching back to the doorstep of my parents’ house, punctuated by – what Wordsworth would call – the journey’s spots of time. I hadn’t dreamed of ending it sat on a bus, dolefully watching the landscape blur by in blatant desecration of the trip’s treasured pedal-pace.

The offending object.

Before you worry, I haven’t thrown in the towel just yet. When I talk about the end of my journey, I’m only referring to my journey as a solo cyclist. Côte d’Ivoire marks the end of my West African adventure. From here, I take a plane to Tanzania and resume the journey from the East. But I won’t be resuming my journey. It feels a little selfish to claim full ownership when, from there, it will also become the journey of three of my friends. When I was joined by Joe in Northern Europe and Doug in Spain, there still remained such a significant portion of solo riding that I happily coined it my journey, linguistically subjugating my companions to supporting roles. Yet now, with at least some of the trio joining for the foreseeable future, it feels more appropriate to rename this our journey. 

But, before being forced to share the limelight, I still had a final stretch of riding ahead; a victory lap, if you like. After the frustrations of the recent health-related hiccup, I longed for a satisfying conclusion; a significant end to my most significant personal journey so far. Crossing the border into Côte d’Ivoire, this dream felt well within my grasp. There were no more obstacles. All that remained was a four day cruise through one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, ending in the jewel of its economic crown, Abidjan. In truth, I was looking forward to the relative comfort that accompanies such prosperity. After the austerity of my time in Guinea, where finding a working fridge was a stroke of celestial good fortune, the prospect of smooth tarmac and the occasional convenience of a cold drink felt – in the eternal words of my great aunt – very spoiley indeed. 

Just a glimpse of the tropical beauty of Ivory Coast.

But this victory lap never came. There’s no clearer indicator that you’ve merely skated along the surface of a place than when you understand it only through comparison. All of the countries I’ve crossed so far impressed uniquely in my memory. All but Côte d’Ivoire. The only real impression I caught of the place was a photographic negative; the stark contrast to it’s neighbour, Guinea. Not ten metres beyond the border post, the roads – which in Guinea are built by foreign powers looking to buy favour, and left to decay as soon as this partiality pays off – transformed dramatically. The Ivorian highways, by comparison, are the fruits of government investment: a self-generating product of rising growth. Not only were the roads silky smooth, they were clean. You know an economy is thriving when they can afford to employ road sweepers. And I don’t mean the machines. As I scythed along the pristine asphalt, I passed hives of workers in high-vis diligently sweeping hard shoulders, roundabouts and junctions with reed brushes. Another cultural quirk that only reveals itself to those inching their way across a landscape.

The country’s silky tarmac… it makes outrunning those storm clouds a little easier.

Sadly, I’d discover little more about the beating heart of this country. Halfway through my second day of riding, just as I was beginning to feel my strength return, I took a punt at some roadside rice. Several kilometres further down the road, I lay squirming on the hard shoulder, my stomach turning somersaults. I was in such acute discomfort that I soon slipped into complete inertia. All I could do was lie flat on my back and cradle my cramping stomach like an infant, timing my exhales with each cloud of dust kicked up by the passing trucks.

Just as I’d resigned myself to staying put, my phone rang. It was Ellie. Luckily, she was feeling far more pragmatic and, hearing my predicament, firmly encouraged me to find proper shelter. I couldn’t quite face the circus of flagging down a truck and heaving Madonna into the back, so I resolved to remount and ride to the nearest village where I could seek refuge in a health centre. Having learnt from my experience days earlier, I refused the antibiotic daiquiri I was offered on arrival – something I was beginning to recognising as the aperitif of choice of the West African medical system – and settled down to rest. By some stoke of luck, the moment my head hit the pillow the clouds opened, and rain thrashed down for the rest of the afternoon. Had Ellie not shaken me from my roadside stupor, my list of the day’s complaints would have been considerably longer. 

So that’s how my journey ended. The next morning, I woke at first light and rode to Gagnoa – the last easy bail-out point on my route. There, I caught a bus that whisked me across the final kilometres to Abidjan. As we wound down the chaotic highways that pierce the heart of the city, I tormented myself with the dreams of how things could have ended. But try as I might, I couldn’t simply conjure up these feelings or reflections. The journey felt stunted, and I felt flat. 

As I soaked up my last days in Abidjan – preparing both body and bike to go East – I reflected on why the conclusion of this chapter mattered so much to me. I began to realise that, despite my strong proclivity for company, I’d come to value spending such extended and exposed time alone. Travelling solo, your experiences take on a unique character. Untempered by those around you, you’re able to steep them in as much significance as you like. It’s an intoxicating feeling, and one I was loath to let go of. A conversation, a view, a song – all can make indelible marks on your psyche as you preserve them, raw and undiluted, in the sarcophagus of memory. The final stretch of solo riding felt like the right time to honour the experiences I’d chosen to preserve, and crystallise the lessons I’d learnt from them.

But soon, I began to realise that there’s nothing special about the ending. These lessons can’t exist in static reflection. It’s only by going forward that the memories will resurface and their lessons will be tested. Though it takes on a different character, a journey shared is far from a journey halved. Riding as part of a team, it will be more important than ever to share our experiences – our learning – to overcome the challenges of the road together.

So, who am I sharing this journey of shared experience with? Before they trickle into these weekly chronicles, it feels important to give a proper introduction to the other acts in our travelling circus. 

Nadia 

Nadia holds the title of my oldest friend, one she shares with her two brothers. She’s another product of the island – Ynys Enlli – that taught me all there is to know about luggage duty. Her family, like mine, enjoyed a ritual retreat to the wild simplicity of island life each summer. Though given their mainland home was in the equally wild simplicity of The Lake District – unlike ours in the urban sprawl of Wolverhampton – you’d be forgiven for thinking it was something of a busman’s holiday. 

As children, our spirit of adventure was boundless. In the Lakes, we’d scramble up nearby ghylls, and fling ourselves from the tops of the highest waterfalls into the plunge pools below. We’d tow canoes down the river, paddle across Rydal Water, and rig an elaborate complex of hammocks to spend the night on the island in the middle. Their Lake District refuge – a converted Barn that sits proudly atop Rydal Mount – became somewhat of a sanctuary for me in my wild youth. I’d periodically be shipped up North to blow off some steam. Nadia’s family fast became an extension of my own, and we’ve ridden the waves of adolescence together into the choppy waters of life, remaining firm anchors for one another throughout. 

A relic of shared time on Ynys Enlli – spending the night in a makeshift beach shelter.

So, as adults, it’s really no wonder that Nadia and I are reuniting on another adventure, to discover the secrets of some further flung corners of the world. This particular escapade has long been in the pipeline. We both lived in London for rather more years than you’d think such wild things could withstand. During cooped up evenings in the capital, we spun whimsical webs of remote adventures. Throughout our scheming, West Africa sat waiting in the wings. One year, for her birthday, I visited a map shop in London – a faded relic of days before devices – to source a projection of the region, hoping it might solidify some of our fantasies. In typical style, the lottery of life meant that I faced an open expanse of time before she did. So that’s how I ended up alone in the West – a section we’d dreamt might be shared – and with a suite of companions for the East – a part which might once have been solo.

Our cycling history together stretches back four years to a drizzly October weekend on the inner circle of Regent’s Park in London. This was Nadia’s first introduction to the world of cycling, beyond her daily commute, and it was a race. Now this race wasn’t a smooth-legged time trial, or a brawling bar-to-bar crit, this was a gruelling endurance relay – the Le Mans of cycling. The objective was simple: cycle as far as you can as a four-person team in 24 hours. But there was a twist. Given it was the weekend the clocks go back – the official end of British Summer Time – the race was actually 25 hours, with a bonus hour (between 2am and 3am) when you could rack up double-distance. You could choose any stage for your cycle (as long as it wasn’t a continuous descent) and your distance was recorded digitally through an app. Bar an actual velodrome, we may have chosen the most tedious track possible: a one kilometre loop of a park in central London.

To mark the end of summer with a flourish, the rain began at 5pm on Saturday and continued for the next 20 hours. We rotated through hour-long stints in the saddle, with Tom and Mike, our teammates, tackling the power hour between them. By the end, we’d racked up a collective 800 laps of that tight ring of tarmac, placing us on the podium for the mixed teams. This all goes to say Nadia is made of stern stuff. If she can pedal hard in the numbing cold of an autumnal downpour, endlessly lapping a mind-numbing kilometre-long loop through the night, then Africa will be a walk in the park. 

Race HQ.

Tom 

For almost 10 years, Tom and I have enjoyed a level of closeness atypical of many male friendships. From the start, we operated as a unit. Family holiday? Tom would be in tow. School football match? I’d be cheering from the sidelines. We’ve spent several summers in very close quarters during road trips across Europe; once, a two week trip sleeping in the cramped confines of my hatchback, and later, a two month trip sharing the back of a self-converted VW Transporter. It wasn’t uncommon for people to wonder if we might, in fact, be more than friends – and I’m sure few would who knew us would have raised an eyebrow at the news.

Having been deemed a little too rebellious for the confines of his previous school, Tom landed on the doorstep of my school on the first day after Christmas of our GCSE year. It was a small school divided into single-sex houses. Every house was home to ten or so students of each year group. A new addition was big news. On his first day, Tom was summoned to the housemaster’s office where, among other warnings, he was advised to avoid one particular student in his year. No prizes for guessing who. Having charted a similarly rebellious trajectory myself the year before, it was decided it might be in everyone’s best interest to keep us apart. Luckily, neither of us took this advice to heart and so began a friendship that would stand the test of time. 

A picture I hired would never again see the light of day. And here I am, sharing it with reckless abandon?!

Sharing such a close bond at such a formative time of life creates a fascinating social microclimate. Whilst we shared an immense swathe of common ground, we each also jostled to form an individual identity. With this, subtle dichotomies began to emerge as we both began to form particular roles. Ideologies, proclivities, activities – all were subconsciously sorted into our shared Venn Diagram. Endurance sport was one such activity that lay firmly within Tom’s domain. During his university years at York, he devoted himself to rowing, quickly advancing from a novice to a permanent fixture in the first boat. While he wasn’t on the water, he’d tackle other feats: from marathons, to multi-day cycles. I still remember a casual suggestion by Tom one summer that we should attempt to cycle from Lands End to John-O-Groats. No way, I’d replied, that’s your area. To no-one’s surprise, Tom still tackled the 1000 mile challenge – along with his friend Rory – in a blisteringly quick 11 days. Not bad for a newbie cyclist on a bike six sizes too small. 

Over the years, through the beautiful process of maturing, our compartments have merged to form a rich shared space, and our distinct identities have formed and flourished. It’s Tom I have to thank for showing me the gift of cycle touring, and the freedom it brings. It was only by joining him for a brief stint of his multi-month intercontinental epic across Eurasia that I gained the confidence to embark on a similar challenge of my own. It feels wonderfully full-circle that Tom is coming to join a section of this journey.

Seamus

The wise old sage.

Seamus’ decision to join this trip – unlike Nadia’s and Tom’s – didn’t come as a result of years of shared exploration; or from climbing to the next rung of the incremental ladder of adventure. Instead, it was a shot in the dark – a courageous expression of beautiful, blind enthusiasm. 

When I first met Seamus, at a house party he was hosting in Leeds, I had the distinct feeling he was already a familiar friend. He has the twinkling eyes of a mischievous old sage and a paradoxical laugh – wicked yet warm – that makes you feel as if you’re always in on the joke. 

The link, unsurprisingly, had come through Tom. After only two terms at my school – enough to forge a lifelong friendship – he moved on to a different sixth form where he met Seamus. With the gentle muddling of groups that comes with time, the boundaries between Tom’s friends and mine soon began to blur. Before long, I was travelling up to Leeds independently – stationing in Seamus’ blissfully chaotic student house – to climb on Yorkshire gritstone and tour the pounding dancefloors of northern basements. 

In March last year, as I stared head on at the prospect of a (somewhat) solo bike tour, I planned a test of my solitary resolve in the form of a tour across Ireland. Naturally, my extroverted soul yearned for company. So, when I heard Seamus – along with his brother Ben, and our friend Jamie – was attending the inaugural race at his Dad’s greyhound track in Northern Ireland, and that this date happened to coincide with the tail end of my own Irish excursion, there was nothing else to do but ditch the rigour of this test and start scheming. 

Seamus – as you might guess from his snap decision to up sticks and join the African adventure – is unfailingly game. Despite being far from a veteran of two-wheeled travel, he managed to source some top-of-the-range bikes from his Dad – a keen cyclist – and rally the support of Jamie and Ben to join him. The trio cut a truly comical silhouette as they hauled themselves over the horizon, the clean lines of their carbon frames disrupted by the Quasimodian hump of the bulging backpacks they carried. A quick tip for anyone wondering: for the sake of your bottom, touring with a loaded backpack is ill-advised. As I remember, our trip consisted of unequal parts cycling and sipping. With the sheer quantity of quality Guinness beckoning us from the sidelines – not to mention the anaesthetic it provided for several sore rears – I’ll let you guess which activity prevailed.

Can you spot the trademark beard?

I’ll forever be in awe of the two-footed enthusiasm that drove Seamus to give this trip a punt. It’s a quality I greatly value; and one that’s essential if you’re to ride the waves of a remote bike tour, and come out smiling. From all I’ve seen so far, I’ve no doubt Seamus will do just that. 

So, just like that, my journey ends and our journey begins. But, before we get stuck into all that, I have the pleasure of welcoming a surprise addition to the ranks of African cycle tourer. Someone who once vowed she’d never be caught on two wheels…