Blog

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…

I am so very excited at the prospect of seeing my second cheetah ever in the wild when we traverse Hwange National Park on this week’s Zimbabwe Safari Rally. I saw my first cheetah a lifetime ago, but he still sticks out in my memory. Well, his one spotty back leg sticks out, and the…

NB my time for the Argus is a new personal best. My previous personal best was 6 hr 45 min. I am blogging to you from the back of a Joburg Uber on my way to my eye doctor for a checkup and an oil pressure test.

Day 3 7th March 2023 – Ladismith to Barrydale Distance – 78 kmClimb – 708 mTime – 5 hr 03 minAv Heart Rate – 122 bpmMax Heart Rate – 182 bpm I am blogging to you from Barrydale, possibly the coolest town in South Africa. The town is wall-to-wall quirky, full of little boutique hotels,…

One of the dedicated and quite amazing team of carers based in Zimbabwe has recently retired and sent us this report – it encapsulates the work that ZANE undertakes and is testament to the love and compassion which the ZANE donors pass on through the ZANE teams to the ordinary men and women struggling to…

This blog is coming to you from Oudtshoorn, home to every ostrich in creation, and in the Karoo, which is a desert apparently. Desert my arse. Having ridden the Karoo, we now know that ostriches have long necks so as to avoid drowning when it floods following hail storms and torrential downpours, but more of that later.