Old Legs Tour

The Old Legs 2021 Silverback Tour

Every year, a group of middle aged to bloody old bicycle riders from around the world converge on Harare for the Old Legs Tour, in which they ride their mountain bikes to somewhere far away, and normally over more than a few inconveniently large hills and mountains, to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s beleaguered pensioners. In 2018, their destination was Cape Town by way of the Kalahari. And in 2019, they rode to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro. And in 2020, the Old Legs Tour was supposed to ride to Namibia’s Skeleton Coast. But because of closed borders and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, they cycled 3000 km around the circumference of Zimbabwe and the SA contingent cycled cross country from Hillcrest, Durban to Lamberts Bay on the west coast..

The needs of the pensioners on the ground in Zimbabwe are greater than ever with hyper-inflation back again for the second time in ten years. The generations that built our country have been left with nothing and will not survive without charity. And because of the coronavirus crisis, so many our donors in the Europe and the UK who would normally help, cannot. Thus, we do not have the luxury of simply popping our fund-raising adventures back on the shelf for a year. We have to act now, sooner than later. So the Old Legs Tour will embark on an even tougher adventure, which we have called the Silverback Tour. Here’s what that will look like.

Old Legs Tour Team Of 2019

The Old Legs Tour is a well-known mountain biking bunch of enthusiasts who migrate annually for far off places along remote routes to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners. That is the generation that built Zimbabwe; doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers, yes, but mainly ordinary working class people who have had their pensions, their life savings, their wealth and their dignity eroded and reduced to nothing through hyperinflation and economic hardship. Alas

In July 2021, the Old Legs will ride their toughest Tour yet, the Silverback Tour, which will take us over 3000 km from Harare through Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda, crisscrossing the steps of David Livingstone and Jane Goodall to ultimately look for gorillas in the mists of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

Our 3000+ Km route will have us cross into Zambia at Kanyemba. From there we will climb out of the Zambesi escarpment and find our way to Luangwa South national park and some of the wildest and most rugged, remote tracks before we reach Zambia’s Great North Road somewhere the other side of the massive Machinga escarpment. We will pedal past Chipundu Village where David Livingstone’s heart is buried, after he died of malaria and exhaustion – I hope that’s not an omen! We’ll pedal to Lake Bangweulu, home of the iconic but ugly Shoebill stork and where the water meets the sky. If we survive the tsetse flies of Kativi, we’ll ride past Ujiji, Tanzania where American explorer Stanley famously quipped “Dr Livingstone I presume” and on to the Gombe Streams park to check up on Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees. From there we’ll skirt around Burundi and the equator, into Rwanda and hopefully navigate safely past the volcanic mountain ranges of the Virunga mountains into Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest where we may never be seen again. If we don’t fall prey to mosquitoes, carnivores, tsetse, Golden Monkeys or the Gorillas we will return to Harare in late August.

We will have ridden in excess of 3,000 kilometres, climbing more metres than I will care to add up, on mostly rough and tough dirt roads and tracks, hopefully having raised US$ 100,000 for our chosen charities, with your help.

Donate to our cause

Please join us on our epic adventure. Follow us on Facebook or on oldlegstour.co.zw. But please be warned, we ride slower than paint dries.