March 2012

It’s been a hectic few months for us in the lead up to this trip, our own fault as we decided it would be a great idea to accompany 12 other (daft?) folk on a charity trip down to The Gambia.  Why daft I hear you ask – because 8 of us were on Honda C90’s and 4 on Chinese copies of the C90, Iain driving the back-up vehicle and John running around filming us!  Not daft at all because these bikes provide a lifeline at Bansang Hospital (http://bansanghospitalappeal.org/) where the bikes are used to, amongst other things, visit patients in outlying villages and to collect blood.  For this self funded trip, we rode the scooters (http://www.scootersinthesahara.co.uk/) from the UK to Bansang and then donated them to the hospital.  We also spent a couple of days at the hospital seeing the bikes in use and helping out where ever needed at the hospital.  The whole experience touched every single one of us.  We also made some very good friends along the way!  Most of the group flew back after the 4 week trip but we’d agreed to travel back overland with Dennis, lasting another 2 weeks.  Arriving back in the UK with only 2 weeks to get ourselves sorted for this trip.  The trip was superb but it’s been harder than we thought to get everything done and the intended departure date has already slipped by a few days.  Fingers crossed there are no more delays.

 

From back L-R: Gordon Sinclair, Belle Sinclair, Nadine Holfter; Carolyn Barns, Sue White, Mark ‘Finbarr’ Denton; Peter ‘Naughty Boy’ Darke, Mike ‘Mr Clean’ White, Dennis Robinson, Debz Simpson;  John Hunter, Will English, Iain Patterson and Anita Smith