2 days and counting

Golly, we have been negligent until now. Our website news updates have been thin on the ground, and while Barty will no doubt frown upon this pre-emptive, inessential informative, I will plough on nonetheless (not least because he's on an aeroplane and can do bugger all about it). Team Leader Barty arrives tomorrow in Namibia, where he will beg, borrow and steal his way to Africat, near Otjiwarongo in central Namibia. The country is home to a staggering 25% of the world's cheetah population - a fact that goes some way to encapsulating the importance of its work as a large carnivore conservation centre. We fly out to join him there on Friday, arriving Saturday.Our bicycles, with a big thanks to DHL, are soaking up the sunshine at Africat and waiting for us to arrive. I was going to suggest that they might have the easy end of this deal - they don't get sunburned, they don't get hungry and they don't have to pedal. That was until I tried lifting Barty's aeroplane-ready panniers that he had wrapped up together in a giant plastic bag. Those bicycles deserve more respect than they are ever likely to receive - each one will carry at least 30kg (i.e. half me), and some considerably more (I have yet to decide whether Chris is best equated to a donkey or a camel, but either way, he is very big and very strong and makes me glad I'm a girl). With you, I look forward to hearing Barty's thoughts from Africa, as well as his sigh of relief, which I fully expect to be audible in the British Isles.