Ghaub Farm to Swakopmund – Tuesday September 4th

This was going to be the longest distance riding of the trip so far at six hundred and fifty kilometres so I was up and packing at about 6:30am just as the sun was rising. It was yet another beautiful morning, which prompted me to feel grateful for the weather I had enjoyed since arriving in Kenya all those weeks ago.

The guy at the farm told me that the first twenty five kilometre section of gravel road as far as the tar road was not as bad as the access route I had taken coming to the the place. So all augured well and I was feeling pretty happy about the day ahead.

…. that is at least until myself and Simba had a disagreement about which way to get through a soft sandy stretch. Mind you it could have been that, as the sat nav was showing just two kilometres to the tar road, I let my guard down a bit. I had noticed the change in road texture but before I knew it the front tyre sank down and lodged in the sand spinning the bike in a pirouette like a ballerina.

Simba slid along in one direction and I flew off in another. Thankfully I had not been riding fast and the only damage was a big dent in my pride.

So I picked myself up and set about getting the bike upright again. Fully laden, this is one heavy beast and, although I have managed to lift it before, it was always in locations firmer under foot. I have done a couple of off road training courses in Wales in the past so I just followed what I knew.

The first thing you do is to make sure that first gear is engaged and to pull out the side stand so that once you get it upright, it won’t fall over onto the other side. You then squat down with your back against the seat and your arms holding the near handlebar and the rear grab rail. You then lean into the bike and while pulling your arms upwards you try to stand up from the squat.

All that was fine in theory but, because the ground was so soft and sandy, Simba and my feet slipped in opposite directions. So not a budge.

I considered contacting the farm to call for help but, when I checked my phone for signal, there was none. So there I was, in the middle of nowhere with just a few curious warthogs and wild turkeys for company. I had plenty of water so there was no need to panic, as the thought struck me that perhaps nobody would pass on this remote stretch for hours.

Nothing for it but to try the opposite of the technical way so I went to lift it facing the seat. I got a bit of a raise and it seem to be holding firm and not sliding away from me. Each couple of inches was progress until I had it lifted to an angle that caused my own feet to slip. There was no way I was giving up and I dug my feet in as far as I could and kept at it until Simba was upright again.

Then came the even more tricky part of letting it lean over onto it’s side stand. I let it over very slowly and kept my fingers crossed that the ‘elephant’s foot’ extension that I had fitted to it before I left home would hold it up in the soft sand.

Bingo, it was upright again. So now I needed to get it onto a firmer surface. There was a bit of compacted gravel a few metres away and I went to push it over there with assistance from the engine. Crap. The engine wouldn’t start. There was just that horrible clicking sound that many bikers will be familiar with. Now I was starting to worry.

I then did something neither mechanical nor scientific and rocked the bike forwards and backwards. I thought perhaps that petrol was not getting through and that this might free it down the fuel line. I also took it out of gear and put it into neutral. I have no idea if this helped, but the engine started up straight away.

By now I was knackered and I hadn’t even started the six hundred and fifty kilometres on tar. Anyway there was no point in hanging about so I made my way very carefully along the remaining two kilometres of dirt road and off I set.

In the same way as when I started out the scenery was beautiful. There was very little traffic and there were gaps of one hundred and fifty kilometres between towns and there was nothing in between, not even a village.

I stopped off for petrol and a water break at each town, if only just to stretch my legs.

Calling it a ‘highway’ is stretching it a bit but the single lane road was good all the rest of the way to Swakopmund. The journey had taken about nine or ten hours as I rocked into this bizarre little place with it’s high crime rate against tourists.

The tiredness didn’t bother me too much as I reflected on the fact that I had just traversed Africa from Indian Ocean to Atlantic Ocean, so I privately allowed myself to feel a little bit chuffed….