7. Reading. Bicycles up Kilimanjaro (2015)

 

 

 

 

How would you spend a ten-day holiday in Africa? Cousins Richard and Nicholas Crane decided to spend their holiday riding bicycles up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa.
 
First, they both love adventure and sport, including walking, swimming and riding bicycles. Second, nobody had done it before. Most of all, they wanted to raise money for Intermediate Technology. This organisation works in the poorer countries of the world to help people with food, water and jobs. In India, for example, Intermediate Technology helped to design a better fishing boat. Money from Bicycles up Kilimanjaro would buy a windpump to get water from under the ground for a hospital at Wajir in northern Kenya.
 
Richard and Nicholas needed help on Kilimanjaro, and they also needed someone to take photographs, so they found three helpers and a photographer to go with them. Then they had to get food and equipment: tents, clothes, boots, maps, medicine, sleeping bags and, of course, bicycles.
 
On 26 December 1984, six people and three bicycles arrived at the Marangu Hotel near Kilimanjaro National Park. They told the manager that they wanted to leave early next day and discovered a terrible problem. The manager told them that they were not allowed to do that, one month ago two Australians came with bicycles and were turned away. It took three hours of talks before they were allowed to take their bicycles into the National Park.
 

Next morning the expedition began. It wasn’t easy. In some places they had to carry the bikes. They often fell off, and once they got lost in the snow. Surprisingly, on the third day they met another cyclist who had tried to ride up Kilimanjaro alone, but he had found it too difficult and finished his expedition on foot. On the fifth day they began the last part of the ride. Snow and ice made riding, or even walking, difficult and slow. But at last, all six arrived at the top. In his diary Richard wrote, “New Year’s Eve 1984. On top of Kilimanjaro, we, The Highest Cyclists in the World, hoisted our bikes over our heads in celebration.”
 
They came down the mountain in three days. Coming down was more fun: they could ride the bikes fast and easily some of the way, though they still fell off. Almost at the bottom of the mountain they met a Frenchman who couldn’t stop laughing.
 
“Why are you riding bicycles on Kilimanjaro? Now I know what I must do next year: carry a refrigerator to the top!”
 
They wondered. “What good is a fridge on Kilimanjaro? At least you can ride a bicycle, but a fridge is no help at all…”
 
“Yes, yes, but with my refrigerator I can keep my drinks cool all the way up the mountain!”
 
A newspaper article, and later a book about the expedition, raised money for Intermediate Technology - £28,000 by the beginning of 1987. Half of the money paid for a windpump in Wajir. The rest has helped other Intermediate Technology projects. What will the Cranes do next? Don’t be surprised if one day you open the newspaper and read, ‘Two cousins swim the Atlantic’!