2023 Zanzibar Tour

The Old Legs Zanzibar Tour

Welcome to the 2023 Old Legs Zanzibar Tour.
 
My name is Eric de Jong a.k.a. Chicken Legs and I’m part of something called the Old Legs Tour. Every year we ride our bikes to somewhere ridiculously far away, on roads less travelled, looking to have fun, to do good and to do epic. We’re called Old Legs because it sounds more polite than bloody ancient, and because we ride to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners.
 
On May 27 and armed with only a Portuguese-English phrasebook, a smattering of Swahili plus a mountain of other kit, our Old Legs peloton of 10, plus support crew of 6, will leave Harare headed in the general direction of Mozambique and beyond. Because I’ve been involved in route plotting and navigation, it could get interesting. NB We’ve taken the precaution of packing 2 Frenchmen in our peloton, lest we bumble into Francophone Africa.
 
 

2021 Silverback Tour

The Old Legs Silverback Tour

In July 2021, the Old Legs will ride their toughest Tour yet, the Silverback Tour, which will take us over 3000 km from Harare through Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda, crisscrossing the steps of David Livingstone and Jane Goodall to ultimately look for gorillas in the mists of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

Our 3000+ Km route will have us cross into Zambia at Kanyemba. From there we will climb out of the Zambesi escarpment and find our way to Luangwa South national park and some of the wildest and most rugged, remote tracks before we reach Zambia’s Great North Road somewhere the other side of the massive Machinga escarpment. We will pedal past Chipundu Village where David Livingstone’s heart is buried, after he died of malaria and exhaustion – I hope that’s not an omen! We’ll pedal to Lake Bangweulu, home of the iconic but ugly Shoebill stork and where the water meets the sky.  If we survive the tsetse flies of Kativi, we’ll ride past Ujiji, Tanzania where American explorer Stanley famously quipped “Dr Livingstone I presume” and on to the Gombe Streams park to check up on Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees.  From there we’ll skirt around Burundi and the equator, into Rwanda and hopefully navigate safely past the volcanic mountain ranges of the Virunga mountains into Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest where we may never be seen again.  If we don’t fall prey to mosquitoes, carnivores, tsetse, Golden Monkeys or the Gorillas we will return to Harare in late August.

2020 Lockdown Tour Zimbabwe

2020 Lockdown Tour Zimbabwe

2020 Lockdown Tour South Africa

2020 Lockdown Tour South Africa

2019 Harare to Tanzania

2019 Harare to Tanzania

2018 Harare to Cape Town

2018 Harare to Cape Town

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