Blog

I’m blogging to you from the shores of Lake Malawi. Jenny and I honeymooned here a lifetime ago. Mostly she wore a very fetching leopard-skin bikini. I offered to buy her a brand-new bikini for this trip. Because there are women and children out there reading this blog, I can’t repeat what she said.

30 May 2023 – Day Four of the Old Legs Zanzibar Tour – Tete to Mwanza. Ouch. Distance – 129 kilometersTime – 11 hours 29 minutesAv heart rate – 135 bpmMax heart rate – 180 bpm Av temp – bloody hot. Touted as the second hardest day on Tour, yesterday was brutal and deserves promotion….

The Rest Day Wrap. Harare to Mangochi. Watch the video compilation of the journey The Old Legs are making to raise funds for struggling pensioners in Zimbabwe. The video showcases their journey so far from Harare to Mangochi in Malawi. At this point they have ridden just over 600 kilometers through Africa – supposedly in…

28 May 2023 – Day Two of the Old Legs Zanzibar Tour. I have titled today’s blog the colony strikes back, wreaking havoc with my ride stats as recorded above in the process, but more of that later. Distance – 100.2 kilometersTime – 11 hours 29 minutesAv heart rate – 114 bpmMax heart rate –…

Reports from the untiring ZANE caring team in Zimbabwe make us all realise how much the elderly rely on the aid and emotional support the carers provide for the often lonely elderly folk who are struggling day to day in Zimbabwe. Don L After our visit to Don L, we decided that since we could…

For the seventh time in six years, Eric and his amazing team of intrepid explorers are taking to their bikes to pedal (and kayak!) to Zanzibar to raise awareness of the plight of the elderly in Zimbabwe and, hopefully, some much needed funds to help them. ZANE is a proud partner in Eric’s exploits and…

This is a message from Tom Benyon – the founder of ZANE – who has been raising money for the desperate victims of Zimbabwe’s decline for 20 years. The Zimbabwe authorities have learned one crucial lesson. World media are only interested if people are being killed with bullets or machetes. Slow starvation and the absence…

With less than 4 weeks to go to our Zanzibar Tour, I’ve been forced to take the drastic step of adding prunes to my list of banned ride snacks, even though they contain a list of vitamins longer than the alphabet. Alas. Courtesy of a hernia op last week, I got to witness the more…

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…

Reports from the wonderful ZANE caring team on the ground in Zimbabwe show once again how great the need is, not only for actual aid but for the time the carers are able to spend with lonely, frightened elderly folk who are struggling to survive. Your help is what is keeping this work going, even…