ZANE Australia is very proud to be associated with the Harare to Nambia Old Legs Bike Ride and particularly the OLT Down Under and OLT Anzacs both of which are based in Australia and see our very own participants, Pete Brodie WA, Mark Johnson and Alan Crundall QLD enter the awe inspiring challenge of riding from Harare to the Skeleton Coast Namibia.
The commitment and endurance of these Aussie Zimbos is incredible and we wish them all the very best in their endeavour. What we can guarantee as ZANE Australia is that every donation, however big or small, will be faithfully used to the benefit of the forgotten old folk of Zimbabwe who continue to struggle with the spiralling costs of food and medicine. Your donations are tax deductible and will be used to the utmost good. let’s join together to support the Old Legs riders an, through them, the pensioners of Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s Vulnerable Pensioners
On 2 July 2022, 10 mountain bike riders, Including our own Pete Brodie, optimistically described here as middle aged but only if they push through to 120 years old plus, will pedal out of Harare in the general direction of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast in the fifth and toughest yet edition of the Old Legs Tour. to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners.
As is our want, we’ll ride on the roads less travelled, 3000 plus kilometers of them, mostly dirt. We’ll ride through a town called Gokwe, into the wilds of Chizarira, via Milibizi and alongside the mighty Zambezi, and into Victoria Falls for our first rest day. And then across epic Vic Falls Bridge and into the back of beyond that is western Zambia and then on to the Angolan border, back across the Zambezi River at Katima Mulilo, and then down into the Namibian hinterland via Grootontein and past Etosha National Park, through the Namib Desert taking the scenic route via Desolation Valley, Spitzkoppe and the White Lady Bushman and the Brandberg Massif. Then we’ll head across to the iconic Skeleton Coast, south through the aptly named St Nowhere, Cape Cross and the Dead Sea Swimhole towards our finish line at Swakopmund. I am exhausted just having typed all of that, but also so excited.
The Old Legs is an especially apt description for this year’s peloton. Al Watermeyer will be the senior man, aged 73 years young, with Eric de Jong the youngest at just 63 years old. And in between we have Graeme Fleming, Adam Selby, Mike Reimer, Rob Cloete from Zimbabwe, Alan Crundall, Pete Brodie and Mark Johnson from Australia, and Nik Bellwald from Switzerland. Eeeish! Already I can hear bones creaking.
As always, we are riding to help the generation that built a country, a generation who have lost their wealth and had their pensions reduced to zero by thirty years of economic stupidity and two bouts of hyper-inflation. Doctors, lawyers, farmers, plumbers and engineers, after a lifetime of hard toil and saving have been left with zero. And worse than that, many Zimbabwe’s pensioners have also lost their families and safety nets, scattered to the furthest corners of the world to try and start their lives over, often from scratch, leaving them in the invidious position of not being able to be there for their parents. Without charity, many pensioners would have nothing.
Help us help them by supporting our epic cause and our epic adventure – 10 pairs of Old Legs pedalling 3000 km on mountain bikes on dust and dirt and through wild animals, across some of Africa’s harshest landscapes.
Follow the Old Legs Tour on Facebook or on www.oldlegstour.com. But please be warned, we ride slower than paint dries.
You can donate to https://www.gofundme.com/f/zimbabwes-vulnerable-pensioners
Alternatively, please donate to the link below stating the “Namibia Tour”.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)