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