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The Big Africa Cycle

From a small Dorest village to Cape Town, the epic cycling journey of Peter Gostelow

Today's post is dedicated to a man on a modern-day pilgrimage of lung-busting, leg-crippling, back-breaking proportions. Peter Gostelow is a man on a mission, cycling from England to Cape Town, SA., the Big Africa Cycle. Not motorcycling mind, but bicycling; pedal power.

Peter is obviously one of those special people who commit their mind to something and complete it no matter what, you read about them in the Sunday supplements Life Magazine and the news gives them a segment as they finish rowing the Atlantic or sailing the globe single-handed. What would drive anyone to embark on such an adventure?

I guess the answer's in the statement, adventure! Peter has already completed a mind-bogglingly long journey from Japan to England, taking him into countries such as Pakistan and Tjakistan and through Tibet. Peter provided me with some figures and I was astounded, apparently he's so far clocked over 75,000km of distance travelled and visited 50 something countries, and I thought the 1,800km from Cairns to Ayers Rock and back was far! And I had a car!

Peter himself admits that he was faced many times with the confused looks of others and the question "Why?"; a fair enough question but something obviously drives Peter to do it. Reading through his blog posts, I see he's been attacked with a machete and robbed of his camera and of course there must be the saddle-soreness, constant aches, sunburn, risk of malaria, Dengue fever, Human Sleeping sickness, food posioning, questionable water and even questionabler (?) meat. Other than being someone who would rather live life than watch it pass by from an office window, Peter is also raising money for AgainstMalaria, a charity that, as you guessed it, raises awareness of malaria and money to combat it. Malaria, via the vector of Female Anopheles Mosquitos has been responsible for the deaths of between 80-250 million people since 1900. And yet, with just a small few changes, the possibility of contraction can be severely reduced. 100% of the donations are spent on mosquito nets to provide a safe sleeping habitat for millions of men, women and children. Peter has so far raised a respectable sum of 11,651 GBP, with a traget of 20k. So please, visit AgainstMalaria now and donate so Peter can reach his goal.