Why Cycle Africa? Reason 2: Friends

I would never have signed up for the Cycle Africa challenge if I didn't know anyone else who was going. Basically, I would never have signed up if I wasn't doing it with friends.

I don't consider myself as a shy person, but the thought of travelling to a foreign country - never mind facing a tough few days of cycling, wild camping and digging toilet trenches - with a bunch of folk I'd  never met before was enough for me to almost delete the 'Sign up for Cycle Africa, Group 3, October 2015!' email that dropped into my inbox after completing Ride the Night 2014.

However, some of the women I'd become firm friends with through the WvC Facebook groups, and through London's very first women-only night ride, had already applied for the challenge. And they were very persuasive!

After some, em, gentle prodding (from the likes of Joanne Jackson, the wonderful woman who shared her breast cancer experience in my little book), I read the gumph in the email attachment. I saw the words 'safari', 'cycling', 'Africa', 'raising awareness and funds' (as discussed in Reason number one post..) - and sent off the application form.

The inimitable Joanne Jackson

I then became one of Jo's Platoon of Persuaders, convincing some of our fellow WvC friends that Cycle Africa would be an experience they couldn't possibly miss out on, especially as we'd all be doing it together...

Soon, our numbers grew and we became a special group that supported each other from Day One. We shared fundraising ideas, training traumas, our fears, hopes, worries, achievements and expectations. I could not wait to board the plane with this fantastic, fun and flippin wonderful bunch of friends!

Ride the Night 2015

In July last year - three months before we were due to leave for Tanzania - I pulled out of Cycle Africa.

An opportunity arose to work for Breast Cancer Care (ironically, one of the WvC partnership charities), but it meant I had a choice to make between the cycle and the job.

I swithered - for the sole reason that I wanted to share my experience of cycling in Africa with the group of women who'd become such a big part of my life - but I eventually decided that the job (which was all about raising awareness and promoting early detection of breast cancer) was an opportunity not to be missed. And Action for Charity said I could defer the cycle and join the next group to go to Tanzania in June 2016.

I shed a few tears over the course of the next few months and had so many mixed emotions. I felt sad, then I felt guilty for feeling sad (I was still getting to go on a trip-of-a-lifetime! There are people in the world starving for goodness sake!!), I felt excited for my pals while I continued to follow their progress, I felt a wee bit jealous when I saw all the glorious photos of them together at the airport then during their adventure, then I felt a big bit guilty for feeling a wee bit jealous, I felt proud - so very proud - when I heard about all of the challenges they'd faced and how brilliantly they'd risen to all of those challenges, and then - only then - did I start to feel excited again about my own impending trip.

Taking on Tanzania

Fast forward and it's now less than eight weeks till I board the plane. There hasn't been much of an opportunity for me to forge close friendships with my fellow Group 4 cyclists in the same way that I did with the Group 3 bunch. However, it turns out that there will be a few familiar faces flying out with me (including the wonderful Diana who designed the Cycle Africa kit - as modelled above!) and, from the little contact that we've all had, the rest of the group do seem like a friendly lot!

Next weekend some of us will meet during a training weekend in the Cotswolds, which will be a great opportunity to get to know some of my travel companions and, I'm sure, make new friends.

They'll not be the friends that I started this journey with, but they are the ones that I'll be finishing it with. Every single one of those friends - whether we met in 2014 or 2016 - will have had some part to play in my Cycle Africa adventure.

And, I predict, in some new adventures to come...