A Month To Go

There is now roughly a month between me and departure. That sounds like plenty of time until I look at the list. Then it sounds alarmingly close. For the last few weeks, Africa has existed mostly in research tabs, notebooks, maps and conversations. The idea became a plan, the plan slowly became something I could imagine actually doing, and now I seem to have reached the stage where there is very little left to decide except whether I am genuinely going to get on the bike and start riding south. The answer to that is increasingly obvious. Yes. I mean, why not?

The route is about as decided as I think it can ever be from a desk. Friends and family know I’m going. The medical appointments are booked. Visas and borders are beginning to make more sense. The bike is gradually moving towards the setup I want. And somewhere amongst all of that, FTtouring is almost ready to go live. Suddenly the countdown feels real.

I have never been particularly interested in planning every turn of a journey before leaving. That would remove half the fun and turn an adventure into a holiday. But Africa is not somewhere I want to approach completely blind either.

There is now a broad route stretching from the UK towards Cape Town, with the countries, likely border crossings and major visa stops mapped out as far as reasonably possible. There are alternatives where I know alternatives may be needed and several places where I already expect the plan to change. That feels about right. A route on paper is useful, but believing the road will respect it is less so.

The important thing now is understanding the points where improvisation becomes more difficult. Borders. Visas. Seasons. Places where one decision could determine what happens several countries later. That is where most of my attention is going. Not trying to know everything. Just making sure I know enough.

There are countries where visas can hopefully be collected along the way, cities that may become unexpectedly important because of the embassies they contain, and borders where information still seems to depend heavily on who crossed most recently. It is an odd way to plan a journey. Instead of simply asking, Where do I want to ride?, I sometimes find myself asking, Where do I need to be in three countries’ time so I can get permission to enter the one after that? Adventure by bureaucracy.

Another thing has changed. I’m no longer quietly thinking about Africa. People know. Friends ask about it. Family ask about it. Conversations that once involved vague answers about where I might go next now involve the words Cape Town.

There is something dangerous about telling people your plans. It removes an escape route. When an idea only exists inside your head, you can change it whenever you like. Nobody notices. Nobody asks why. Once you have repeatedly told people that you intend to cycle from Canterbury to Cape Town, quietly deciding to spend winter somewhere comfortable in southern Spain becomes slightly harder to explain. Not impossible, just a little embarrassing.

More importantly, though, saying it aloud has made me more excited.

The journey is beginning to exist outside the maps and spreadsheets. People want to know when I’m leaving. They want to know where I’ll go. They ask how long it will take. I still don’t have particularly good answers to some of those questions. That is probably a good sign.

The next few weeks are really about reducing the number of important unknowns. Not all of them. That would be impossible. Just the ones I can reasonably deal with before leaving. Vaccinations and medical preparation. The bike. Equipment. How I’m going to charge everything. Where visas are most likely to be available. Which borders currently appear usable. What I genuinely need to carry and what can remain behind.

The temptation is still to keep researching forever. Every answer creates another question. At some point I will have to accept that enough is enough. There will always be another forum post to read. Another rider to message. Another route possibility. Another piece of equipment that somebody on the internet insists is absolutely essential to survival. Eventually the only useful research left will be the sort done while actually moving. I’m looking forward to that.

A huge part of the last few weeks has also gone into something that has nothing directly to do with visas or border crossings. The website.

FTtouring is finally close to becoming what I have wanted it to be for a long time. A proper home for the journey. Not just somewhere to announce where I am, but somewhere I can build something useful from all these years spent travelling by bike. A resource for others who have the same questions as I did but couldn’t find the answers. The journals will show the journey from the inside. The destination and route guides will hopefully make some of the places I ride easier for other people to explore. The articles can deal with everything that does not quite fit into either. And for Africa, the plan is to bring you along much more closely than I have on previous journeys.

That part genuinely excites me. I have spent years collecting stories, photographs, mistakes and lessons without ever having one place that really brought all of it together. Now I almost do. I’m hoping the website will be live properly before I leave. That deadline is perhaps responsible for an unreasonable amount of time currently being spent in the library.

There is another side to all of this that I have been thinking about more seriously. How do I fund it?

I travel cheaply. Very cheaply. Living in a tent, cooking for myself and avoiding unnecessary accommodation keeps costs much lower than most forms of travel. But cheap is not free. There are still visas, food, insurance, ferries, repairs, replacement equipment and the endless collection of small expenses that accumulate over thousands of kilometres. So alongside the website, I have set up a simple way for anyone who enjoys FTtouring and wants to help keep the journey moving to do so through Ko-fi by buying me a coffee. The caffeine monster in me will appreciate it immensely.

I do not want FTtouring to become a website where everything interesting disappears behind a paywall or every other paragraph asks for money. The journals, guides and main content will remain there for everyone. But if something I write helps you plan a trip, gives you a few minutes of entertainment or you simply enjoy following the journey, you can choose to throw a coffee into the fuel tank.

You can find it on the Support FTtouring page. There is the option to make a one-off contribution, or support regularly if you want to be more involved. I’m also building extra supporter material around the journey — the less polished things that do not necessarily belong on the main website: short updates from the road, audio, photos, bits of video, early material and opportunities to ask questions as the journey develops.

Nothing essential disappears if you do not support. You still get the journey. But for roughly the price of a coffee, you can help make a small part of it happen. Enough people doing that occasionally could make an enormous difference over the course of a year.

The strange thing is that despite all the preparation, my life itself still looks much the same. The woods still remain my home and the tent still provides my nightly shelter. But underneath that routine there is now a countdown. Each completed job matters because there are only so many days left to complete them. The equipment pile is shrinking. The route is becoming clearer. The website is almost ready. People know. The departure date is no longer an abstract point somewhere in the future. It is close enough that I can feel it pulling at me. And the excitement is beginning to outweigh everything else.

There are still doubts. There will probably be doubts on the morning I leave. That is normal. What has changed is that I am no longer asking myself whether Africa is going to happen. I’m asking whether I can get everything finished before it does.