Dear Rick I do seem to have had a good run in life Started in a well Bombed Low rent district of Sheffield 1944 a sickly child due to the industrial smog but was good at geography & history I was quite eager to find some warmer climate So by 20 year old I set off on a pushbike to South Africa ,Well Stanford's General map of Africa showed roads that are just' Pistes' tracks in the sand plus Mauritania Closed its border to Morrocco . So I itch up Casablanca trying the post for ships No go so hitch to Alger get a visa for Mali & hitch down to Adrar after being invited to a wedding ? festivity at small Oasis great people. After a week in Adrar two trucks form convoy & I ride the top of one to Gao in Mali 7 days across the Sahara first two in Sandstorms boil by day & freeze by night .from Gao Timbuctoo is only 140 miles or so But I hitched all day one car came by (there is no paved road just rutted' Pistes' . but got sick so return to Gao & ride a overloaded cattle truck two pain full days to Mopti also on the Niger river .By then sicker than any sea side Donkey . But survived .& twas then an ambling trail of cramped Mille Kilos Red dusty roads through Ivory Coast Liberia, Sierra Leone , The White mans grave !.Back threw getting hassled by Liberian security ordered to leave but picked up a job for a timber company anyway ..Cross Ivory Coast get into great 'palaver' one night nr Grand Bassam the useual I MUST be a spy (Not fitting the normal Ex pat Missionary or Firestone rep. normal people shouted " Johnny Walker " some nit stirred the village up. armed troops roll up search bag ect I had a flint lock & a horn of gunpower (Naturally I was a Muzzle loader after all )and Ide made one Bedouin very happy by giving him two flints for his Snaphance Kabyle earlier ) but no James Bond stuff it looked tense a sort of " Now what they do" But I made a joke gave them an' out ' & That broke up that diffoolgalty .But next day I cross the river in a dug out to Half assini fine row of smartly dressed Ghanaian Police on the jetty their wide short s so crisp their legs moved but the shorts didnt bit like some plastic toy cows Woolworths used to sell. Border hassle . I end in in house arrest at a school with some PCV & Cuso & VSO teachers so was OK .ere they take me to Accra who reasoned I Cant be a Carpenter I know to much of the world ! Yup . So ime to be deported to Nigeria at 7 pounds fare .They wont pay ,Not on your Nelly I sure as hell wont pay , So we settle on a Mammy wagon to Togo :Land for ten shillings .plus a box of cigs to bribe the border bods the High commission gave me .Then the Maliaria strook but I didnt know what it was so hitch to Nigeria via Dahomey .Where at the PCV Hostel their Doctor said it was 104 degrees Malaria no fun when you have to kip in Victoria beach to save the now dwindleing funds That was an education it was a small concrete hovel where the locals went to gamble one bloke was Coffing his mate explained it was yellow fever .Hmmm . Anyway a cop raids the gamblers they explode out the door Ime laying there on a piece of plastic all ide got by then too hot for my long since ditched sleeping bag I just waited till they looked inside but they didn't .Anyway I hitch up to Benin thence the Asaba Oneita ferry cross the now huge Niger river to Enugu Met a fellow Yorkshire man good company thence travel through the Cameroons via Victoria then Duala war in Congo ( nothing much changed !) so took a old Dakata to Fernando Poo .then Spanish ( Francos Spain ) hopeing for a Portugues ship to Angola via Soa Tome but wasn't to be so worked putting a tin roof over oil drum stores for a whole 100 peseta's a day! near the Equator . Talk about cat on a hot tin roof ! Oh well it gave me the price of quarters & tucker Till the Supply ship" Ciudad de Toledo " gave me passage to Cadiz via Lagos ,Monrovia , & the Canaries hitch across Spain to Irun thence hitch up to Boulogne I think from memory . My poo at the time small & covered in green stuff ( You don't wish to know this !)Had Just enough for the ferry to Dover kip in a golf links Cold after the months in the tropics & no blanket
But no mail so I hitch up home with a whole 7 / 6 pence left.. Thats a very condensed version of course . But big phew &' Finished with engines ' So you see after that the run to Ceylon following year was a comparative' doddle' & I never stopped wandering . Stewart Island (NZ)To Dawson City in the Yukon down through to Puerta Cortez in Honduras .All over Australia . worked later Zululand 1970 then down to Cape town & hitched up to Nairobi . The world was my oyster , its any ones who wants it to be. but times now, have about stuffed that caper ..Anyway big cheese ? maybe but it made 79 but cant see me going away much except up or down wards ? .Regards Rudyard
