How often do you hear a comment from the audience like ‘I don’t want this talk to finish!’ Well, that’s exactly what happened when Sue Shuttleworth stood up to talk about her year in the saddle. Entitled ‘Tour d’Afrique’, Sue’s talk was delivered in a modest manner even though she’s cycled 27,000kms over the last 12 months across Africa and South America! Beautiful slides, human anecdotes, fascinating historical facts and political asides had the audience gripped from start to finish.
The tour started in Cairo, with cyclists from all over the world meeting for the first time and weighing each other up whilst pondering what lay ahead. Using the coastal route for safety and camping out each night, the group headed South through Egypt supported by two vehicles – one to prepare lunch and one dinner. With distances of 120kms per day commonplace and mountains roads (tarmacked and empty at this stage thanks to Chinese investment) the group took in many of the sights any visitor to Egypt would want to see – the pyramids, Luxor, Abu Simbel etc.
Sue then went on to discuss the Nile, the countries through which it travels and the implications of the Aswan dam on neighbouring states. We were then transported to Sudan to arrive in Khartoum the location of the famous seige in General Gordon lost his life. Unfortunately we had to finish there but there was overwhelming agreement that we should invite Sue for part 2 – not to mention 3, 4 etc!
Keep an eye on our events calendar for details of the next instalment!