13th Feb 08

Date: 13th Feb 08
Location: St Louis, Senegal
Weather: Clear blue skies and sunshine, 36°c in the day and now 27°c at night
Status: All fantastic as we get back on the road again!

Up early and left Luke in the tent as I decided I needed to get back in the training groove and headed off north up the beach for a long run, got back an hour later after running all the way to the city outskirts with my newly acquired dog for company! Had a swim to cool off as the temp was already rocketing by the time I got back at 9.30am!

After a bite to eat and doing the farewells to Ibou would looked after us impeccably, and to our French friends who own the campsite we’d been staying at we hit the road again for the first time in 4 days, oh after Luke had bought an amazing little drum for Roofus….which you’ll get to see when he gets backs ok!!

We’d thought we’d try and get to the Gambian border but got caught up in the city and headed to a café for lunch before finally hitting the road out around 1pm…far too late!

So we took a little back road to save the hassle of the police roadblocks (on advice from Ibou) which took us through so awesome little villages and towns with smiling faces and waves wherever we went, once we’d travelled for 4hrs we decided to pull off the road and found a site under a baobab tree in where we thought was the middle of nowhere!

Built a fire and prepared another poitjke and were joined by a young boy, around 15 who sat with us not understanding a word but stayed and shared our dinner and coffee with us before heading back to his village. Sitting with him, under the tree, in the starlit darkness with a fire burning was truly brilliant and very memorable!

Headed up to bed around 9.30pm in preparation for the deluge of Valentines cards we’ll be getting in the morning! Night….

End of day location: Gossas, Senegal
Distance covered: 318kms