Two hundred years ago this week when Scottish missionary, African explorer and Victorian hero David Livingstone was born public transport was still in its infancy. The London Underground system – the world’s first – was still 50 years into the future; the steam engine had been invented only a few… Continue reading
At the very heart of the geographical establishment, London’s Geographical Society (now the Royal Geographical Society) laughed at the thought of snow in Africa. Rebmann’s sighting of the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in 1849 was considered complete fantasy for the next decade. Bob Geldof ignored the existence of snow in… Continue reading
The 13 months of Encircle Africa circumnavigation really only had one aim inherent in the idea of circumnavigation: to get back home. Almost four months after my return, I have managed to complete a first draft of what will hopefully become published literature. I am also still asked what it… Continue reading
Around AD 150 a man called Ptolemy sat in Alexandria. This was probably not unusual for the time. Perhaps, in need of a break, he watched the fishermen coming to harbour beside the long lost pharos lighthouse. Modern Alexandria lines the same harbour of ancient times Ptolemy was… Continue reading
Up until 1975 Lourenço Marques was the largest city in Mozambique. Almost overnight it disappeared from the maps of the region. Its disappearance wasn’t the result of war or pestilence, but that of a name change. As Maputo, the city remains the largest in the country, the capital, and home… Continue reading
Being a Croydon boy, it’s sometimes difficult to be proud of the place I was born and brought up, faced with the obvious jokes and the ugly post war buildings. For its faults, of which there are many, Croydon does have things to be proud of. For one, it isn’t… Continue reading
The first time I crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere in Africa (in 2009) I was heading to hospital. It was a four hour journey along Gabon’s Ogooué River on a speedboat with eight roaring outboard motors, about fifty other passengers, and small cockroaches wandering about the lifejacket beneath… Continue reading
Encircle Africa was the first solo and unsupported overland circumnavigation of continental Africa by public transport. It came as somewhat of a surprise to me that I would be attempting to achieve something never completed before in such as manner. Africa’s a big place; the second largest continent. So I… Continue reading
From my recent blogs you might think a horrible death is part and parcel of exploration. Not so. On occasion serious injury or circumcision will suffice, and sometimes just sometimes, you can get away with falling down an elephant pit containing 12 inch long spikes to be saved only by… Continue reading
Long before Richard Burton married Elizabeth Taylor, he (or at least a namesake) was a Victorian explorer fluent in 29 languages. Being barely fluent in one makes me inordinately jealous of the man’s skills, as well as what he termed his “wanderings”. Burton’s wanderings took him through Asia, the Middle… Continue reading
