Bicycling to Africa

I went most of the way with one friend, Josef Köyluglu (28), part of the way with a second friend, Arne Rydén (26), and part of the way single. In retrospective, I could also have done it all alone.

Preparations

In 1991, I bought a "Miyata One Thousand". That's a very good Japanese touring bike. It has frames and tires like a racer, special fittings for the bags on the sides of front wheels. It has 21 gears, widely spaced like on a mountain bike. That's important for the uphills; a racer would be impossible here.

I prefer relatively thin tires because almost all roads I chose were paved. I bought Karrimoor bags, 2 around front wheel and 2 around rear wheel. I bought a small handlebar bag for camera & map. We decided not to bring tent, sleeping bag or cooking stuff. Instead, minimal packing and sleeping in youth hostels, cheap hotels or friends' places. I weighed the stuff by the grams and came down to 12 kg packing including the Nikon FE2 camera.

Before the trip, I made a 90 km test ride with full packing to try it all out. That was very important, e.g. to check correct height of saddle & handlebars.

The trip

The trip went: Stockholm - Gothenburg - Århus, Denmark - North Germany - Holland - Bruges, Belgium - Paris - Lyon - Marseille. From Marseille the ferry to Tunis. From Tunis the plan was to continue into the rather unknown country Libya, and then to Greece and Turkey. However, in Tunisia we ran short of time and money, so we changed the destination to Sicily. On Sicily we cycled from Trapani to Palermo. In Palermo I sent my bike home by rail cargo. I took a regular train to Basel, and hitch-hiked the rest to Sweden.

During the cycling, I always wore bike pants with synthetic suede leather inside. No underwear and daily some fat cream on my skin. Result: No sore behind.

I had one pair of leather bike shoes and one pair of leather sandals. My bike had standard footclips, thus I needed no special shoes.

When it rained I wore a rain cape (maybe that's poncho in English?) over head (a hole for the face) and upper body, spread forward to the handlebars. Worked fine and maybe less trouble than sweaty rain jacket + rain pants. Plastic bags around shoes gives some protection. But I'm no rain expert, since it was warm & sunny on most of my trip. Ironically, a heavy rainfall met us when we arrived in Africa (photo 5).

I wore a bike helmet and used a bike computer. I had only one flat, when I was stupid enough to ride on a Roman road in Vienne, France, with sharp stones, not repaired for 2000 years. But the teflon rear tire was nearly worn out towards the end. In the dark, I used a battery rear light and reflectors front and rear.

I had a simple wheel lock, since the main rule was never to leave the bike out of sight and locked indoors during night.

I tried to start every day decently early, before 10 AM. Slow speed & plenty of breaks the first week. Never pushing my body first days, just doing the speed that feels good. Still, it was easy to do 60 - 80 km per day first week and 80 - 120 km per day later on. The first week by back ached a little, just slightly, maybe because of the low forward position on my racing handlebars.

Conclusion

Before the trip, I was worried about fitness and even did workout in a gym. This proved totally unnecessary. Supposing you're healthy and of normal build, almost no fitness is needed in advance. Any needed fitness comes automatically along the road. Towards the end I had some nice leg muscles to show off.

In Europe I met men & women up to age 85 who gladly biked long distances without being particularly sporty or fit. I don't smoke, but my friend Arne Rydén was a smoker, and he was at least as fast on a bike as I.

Per Åkesson 1996

rev nov '02