THE MAN WHO CYCLED THE WORLD

5 August 2008

It was confirmed a few months ago that a chap called Mark Beaumont would be joining us for the last two weeks of our journey. Mark’s record-breaking round-the-world cycle and our expedition share Artemis Fund Managers as title sponsors, and the synergy when the two converged on the plains of the Masai Mara in Kenya was marred only by Barty’s poorly concealed smirk at Mark’s clean shaven legs.

As Barty pointed out in his last diary entry, not one of us has been able to use the term ‘cyclist’ as a descriptive adjective in the first person yet. For me, this prejudice is multi-faceted and I will admit that I was entirely disinclined to spend the last two weeks of my great journey with someone who talked about sprockets and derailleurs and wore lycra better than he did jeans. When Mark arrived, I quietly noted his strong, wide buttocks and smooth, curvaceously muscled calves, and thought ‘Cyclist’.

It took me all of fifteen minutes to begin to realise that Mark is actually very entertaining and that I am a bigoted witch for thinking otherwise. He certainly comes from the breed of sportsmen that take up rowing and cycling over rugby and cricket (my cursory assessment of his hand-eye coordination supports this argument), but he has an extraordinary character. This year, Mark smashed the round-the-world cycling record, bringing it down from 276 days to 194. Over-achievement sits well with him, though - because he loves what he does, I think. You get the impression that he’ll never ever run out of genuine enthusiasm for talking about that which he has achieved.

When first Mark arrived, he really had very little idea of what to expect from us. We were at the time sipping cold sodas and nibbling toasted cashews with conservationist Ron Beaton at his home in the Masai Mara region of Kenya. “I thought I’d be getting straight on the bike!” he said, with wide blue eyes and a strong Scottish lilt. “Er, no, Mark… no bicycling today. Or tomorrow, in fact. Indeed, Mark, it would seem that you’ve arrived very much in time for the finale part of our trip… the part where we ditch the ‘no booze before cycling’ rule and sleep in beds more than we do tents”. Luckily, this pleased him. It also pleased me, as I struggle to keep up with Barty on a bike (who’s a ball-sport kind of guy), let alone this world-record-breaking-cyclist! I suspect Mark would have been less than impressed by us and our tin-pot cycling outfit, had the actual cycling been the expedition’s focal point. As it was, conservation in communities was order of the day, and we on the Cycle of Life team have nothing to fear when it comes to discussing all things animal. Yep, when it comes to the interaction between communities and their wildlife, we have a good three months of learning on Mark.

Tusk Trust was one of the beneficiary charities of Mark’s round the world trip, so he had some prior knowledge of how it operated – providing carefully selected conservation projects across the continent with financial support where they need it most. He was childishly excited to be in Africa for the first time and visiting some of these projects that he’d heard about. Ron took us on a phenomenal game drive in the Masai Mara game reserve that took in Buffalo, Lion, Elephant, Zebra and Giraffe, and when Mark fell off his seat, I presumed it was over-exuberance, until I realised that the poor guy hadn’t slept in 36 hours.

After a good sleep and a day spent as a team visiting an incredible school that trains young Masai tribesmen to be safari guides, the only thing that stood in the way of Mark being ‘one of us’ was his costly, super-lightweight titanium camping-cutlery which we thought it only right to take the piss out of. Mark threw himself into everything with intelligence and a sense of humour, and we were genuinely very impressed by how quickly he picked up on the issues Ron was facing in Kenya, where the Government’s environment agency had just imposed a blanket ban on development in the Mara ecosystem.

Mark’s documentary came out yesterday and I wish him the best of luck with it. Our many thanks also go to Artemis Fund Managers, who made Mark’s presence on the expedition possible.

Telegraph Online Part 3

Telegraph Online: 12:01am BST 03/06/2008

Cycle of life: part three

In the third installment of their cycling diaries, Jessica Hatcher describes the gruelling ride across the salt pans of Botswana

Friday, May 16 Our biggest challenge to date neatly coincided with the arrival of a new team member. In my best Richard Attenborough voice, I could now go into the behavioural rituals of the lesser-spotted African Cycle of Lifer and the dangers of introducing a second dominant male into a pack at such a late stage. Just a week ago now, journalist Charlie Norton who is covering the trip for the Telegraph Magazine arrived, expecting to take part in an innocuous sounding 'bike ride' for a few days. Cycling across Botswana's salt pans Had he joined us two days earlier, this would have been the case and I do feel slightly guilty that our proximity to a swimming pool when he met up with us lulled him into a false sense of ease and comfort. As Charlie tucked into a burger and chips by the pool at our Botswanan campsite and eyed me up as being unlikely to set the physical stakes too high on the trip, Barty - Chief, Headman and dominant male - was putting the finishing touches to the plan that would make us the first group of cyclists (to our knowledge) to cross Botswana's salt pans unaided. Charlie's most pertinent question on hearing of the plan was "are they even dry?" Indeed, are they dry? No one really ever goes off-road on Botswana's salt pans, see, so no one really knows. I know my Top Gear and had seen the troubles Clarkson had getting across them (and that was with four-wheel drive, not one) but in my dual role as girl and the one who's never been to Africa before, my concerns mattered little. Even the road to get onto the pans was a nightmare – it was sandy, rocky, slippery and soft all at the same time, and the fact that I'm now itching to launch into a dissection of the relative cyclability of a soft but flat surface over the more difficult, grooved two-track worries me. By the time we actually reached the pans, we had four broken front panniers and one buckled wheel and we'd travelled a miserable 35 kilometres in one very long day of pushing and cursing. A big voice in my head was telling me that neither touring bikes nor Jessicas were meant to cross salt pans in this manner. Happily, I was saved the indignity of having a sense of humour failure by Charlie, who had one first, and all credit to the man, it was far more colourful than mine would have been. That was low point one, I would say. Number two was lunch time the following day, when Barty announced that the 2.5kg of maize that was to feed us for the week was, in fact, strong white bread flour, and that basically we were screwed for food. The woman in me rose to the challenge and reeled off a number of innovative ways to cook bread flour on methalated spirits, confident, of course, of enough limiting factors for me never to actually have to attempt any of them. There was then a sorry moment when we all solemnly gathered around three tins of pilchards, two packets of biscuits and a can of luncheon-meat-of-indefinite-origin which was to feed us for the next few days. Low point three was probably the first night on the pan. Barty had talked of incredible stars glinting above a ghostly reflection of the moon in white crusty salt. Instead of gazing at said natural wonder, we spent the evening trudging, heads down, through alternating gorse, salt mud and rock in the dark, trying to get to a point where it was safe for us to spend the night. There was one particularly surreal moment when we hit hard surface and decided to cycle. Bicycling in the dark is really something you should try, if you ever get the chance. I was at the front, navigating with the stars to maintain course and feeling much more like an ocean liner than a cyclist, and behind me was Xavier, shouting to our erstwhile intrepid and now just fading journalist friend, that it is all in the head, and that with a good game of 'Animal, Mineral or Vegetable', he would forget all about the debilitating cramps he was experiencing and be able to keep up. I suppose at least it was better than Chris's suggestion of a game of 'I Spy'. advertisement The low points continued - Graham, who was the man crazy enough to encourage this pan-crossing business, and also the person waiting on the other side hoping he wouldn't need to arrange a rescue mission, tells us he had some interesting moments. A text message we sent began with our global co-ordinates, stated 'progress slow', detailed 'water low' and then finished surprisingly with the phrase 'all fine' (I was told not to worry him unduly). He then enjoyed a phone-call from the pans the next day from a delirious Barty shouting, "They're wet, Graham, wet. The pans are wet. WET." Perhaps my favourite bit is the lone cattle herd who let us fill up our water on the morning after the night-cycling episode – "You are crossing the pans by bicycle? Do not go there. The cows go there. They die." I have to say that for all the blood sweat and fears (I did extremely well and did not cry once throughout all of this), there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this was worth doing. Botswana's salt pans are an incredible natural resource that the country has yet to really exploit, and I feel really rather privileged to have got to know it, albeit at times a little too intimately. www.cycleoflife2008.com www.justgiving.com/cycleoflife In association with Artemis Fund Management. Satellite BGAN unit from the SatCom Group

Telegraph Online Part 2

Telegraph Online: 12:01am BST 07/05/2008

Cycle of life: part two

Barty Pleydell-Bouverie

In the second installment of their cycling diaries, Barty Pleydell-Bouverie the leader of the expedition explains how he came to plan the bike ride across Africa and why it is so important to him

Barty Pleydell-Bouverie and his team of cyclists are making their way across Africa by bike to raise money for Tusk Trust www.tusk.org. Here, Barty reflects on the trip so far. Barty Pleydell-Bouverie: a sadist? Monday, May 5 Craig had just groaned around a corner, hauling his beached bicycle and what was left of his humour behind him like a ragdoll, when the thought that had been buzzing ever closer to my consciousness finally crystallised: am I a sadist? To be fair to Craig, he was coping with the day better than most – but then no bicycle was ever designed to plough deep furrows through Kalahari sand, so a degree of consternation was only to be expected after a day of frustration and heat. In crossing the border from Namibia to Botswana, we had taken a route I had designed to give the expedition access to truly rural Africa. The downside is that rural Africa, especially in the Kalahari, has awful roads that challenge 4x4 engineering and laugh in the face of pedal-powered single-wheel drive. As we pushed, carried, and in Craig’s case dragged, our kit that day, the furrows ploughed in the road were no match for those in the team’s brows. For the last 18 months I have been single-minded in my determination to lead the Cycle of Life team into corners of Africa where people and wildlife live in the greatest proximity – those areas where the ideals of modern life totally fail to apply. I believe that rural Africa should be a land of opportunity for its people, rather than the epitomised image of poverty that most Westerners hold it to be. What makes me uneasy is that I also wanted to make this expedition a reality in order to pursue my very personal dream to learn Africa by immersion. advertisement <A HREF="http://ads.telegraph.co.uk/event.ng/Type=click&FlightID=32145&AdID=39519&TargetID=10241&Values=3607&ASeg=&AMod=&Redirect=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/nationalcruiseweek/" target="_top"><IMG SRC="http://adc.telegraph.co.uk/h/house/7138_national_mpubackUpgifs.gif" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A> This is a dream that I’ve been chasing across conservation projects and community labour teams in southern Africa ever since my brother David lost first his heart, then his life to the continent almost nine years go. Like him, I love Africa and the people who live here; I love the simplicity of perspective it harbours – how the breadth of its horizon somehow makes life’s decisions seem straightforward. No amount of physical discomfort, not even labouring in a foodless Zimbabwe, has ever been able to offset the ease that I feel when in Africa. And knowing this, I could happily take on a day, or even a week, of sweating through the Kalahari with a bicycle as an anchor and still enjoy it – but this time I had dragged six other people with me, and they had no such reason to be cheery. So am I a sadist? Have I led people into their worst nightmare in the naïve expectation that they might uncover in it the same dream that I have? The Cycle of Life project has been built on my aspirations since the beginning, and what I’m putting the rest of the team through may seem cruel – the look in Craig’s eye certainly said as much… As it happens I needn't have worried – the experiences on this trip have so far outweighed the physical and emotional pressures of bicycling through the bush. People of all creeds and colours have shown us a generosity that has surpassed even my hopes and expectations, leading our disparate group of dirty travellers to muddle through our own problems in the knowledge that there are whole populations in Africa who deal daily with problems far greater than the roads of the Kalahari, and do so with monumental humour and irrepressible fortitude. www.cycleoflife2008.com www.justgiving.com/cycleoflife In association with Artemis Fund Management. Satellite BGAN unit from the SatCom Group

Telegraph Online Part 1

Telegraph Online: 12:01am BST 01/05/2008

Cycle of life: diary of a bike ride across Africa

A group of young people have begun a 5,000 mile bike ride through some of southern and east Africa's wildest terrain to discover the community conservation projects of the future and raise funds to help them. Jessica Hatcher reports as the journey gets underway

The seven-strong team who plan to spend four months cycling across Africa is led by Barty Pleydell-Bouverie, a young neuroscientist with a passion for conservation. Barty was inspired to plan this epic bike ride by the tragic death of his brother David, in a safari accident in Zimbabwe.

Jessica Hatcher: adjusting to the 6:1 male/female ratio

Barty is accompanied by three friends Chris, Craig and Jessica. For the first 1000 miles they will also be joined by two young people from the homeless charity Centrepoint Damian and Xavier, and social worker Zak.

The expedition will pass unsupported across seven countries and take four months, visiting around 25 Tusk-supported community conservation projects. Carrying up to 70 litres of water for survival and a satellite that enables them to keep in touch from a Bushman's doorstep in the Kalahari, the team must bicycle on average 100km per day to reach their far-flung conservation projects of choice. They plan to raise money for the Tusk Trust (www.tusk.org) along the way.

Jessica Hatcher, the only girl on the expedition who is also visiting Africa for the first time shares her story:

Monday, April 28

I think there comes a time when doing things because they are character-building becomes irrelevant. Even at the tender age of 25, I have a suspicion that my characteristic shortfalls are pretty much entrenched. So why the hell am I doing this? Eight hours a day grinding a bicycle saddle into my hitherto tender buttocks for four months, with nothing but African bush for a bathroom and a tent that comes with a 6'4" man who I don't even get to have sex with.

So far, emotions have run high (although I am learning that a good fart joke cures even the most severe male melancholy) and tempers have flared (you try putting an Oxford-educated Harrovian with a 19 year old homeless Geordie lad in these conditions 24/7).

We're getting to know Xavier and Damian, the two lads from Centrepoint, very well. Damian has quickly become team problem-solver, amazing with anything from break-pads to solar panels. Xavier, who left his family in France around four years ago to spend six months on the streets in London before finding shelter, is chief humanitarian. We stayed the other night in a village of San Bushmen and shared around a fire our tales from home.

Barty, as project leader, was keen to understand the tribe's position on the brink of modernity. I tend to distance myself with a safety mantra that these ancient communities are like ecosystems – interference is not often a good thing and best left to those with more knowledge than me. But Xavier, my God, he was all about solutions, something we've become so accustomed to dismissing: "Why not send them rice each week, it costs nothing! Why don't we collect old clothes in England and send them? Why not… why not… why not…" Yep, his simple passion to help was humbling… but short-lived. Philanthropism turned quickly to mild existential crisis: "F*ck development, these people are happy... who needs shoes?"

While Xavier is currently lost in developmental ethics, Damian is just plain homesick. He became a father a short time ago. His 'bairn' is nine weeks and four days old today and he hasn't heard any news. He's 19 years old himself and has not really left County Durham before other than to go on a mediterranean cruise. No wonder the guy's a bit overwhelmed – a month of serious physical endurance crossing uninhabited regions of southern Africa on bicycles with three posh guys and a girl who behaves, I suspect, like no girl he's ever met before? I don't blame him.

And how is that girl? I've got over my pride and now tell the boys when I'm struggling to keep up. Emotional adjustment to the 6:1 male/female ratio has taken place mostly on downhill stretches where the wind can wash away the tears; I'm having all sorts of personal revelations, invariably brought on by engaging with the vast African sky, and I'm getting more and more excited about what we are doing – project aims are crystallizing and already futures are opening up.

www.cycleoflife2008.com In association with Artemis Fund Management. Satellite BGAN unit from the SatCom Group.