Get On Africa: Blog One

It's not every day you get to bomb around a field that was set aside for The Pope but that's exactly what we've done this morning; the first proper day of our Get On Africa adventure.

We started the morning at the Riders for Health workshop where the mechanics took us through their setup and maintenance program for their bikes. The celebs ran through the basics of bike maintainance, the mechanic boasted that bikes never come back to the workshop broken, they just come in for scheduled servicing. We'll see if any get broken on this trip...

After our workshop visit, the Get On Africa team and I assembled kitted up and raring to go. It was pouring with rain but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm. Our reliable steeds for this trip are Honda CTX200s. We don't get them over in the UK but they're sturdy little things, the same size as a 125 and with about as much grunt, they plod along taking everything that's thrown at them. They're at the heart of the Riders for Health effort and while they might not be the big thumpers that some of the guys on the trip wanted, what they lack in outright power they more than make up for in reliability and ease of use.

The field we trained in was marshy and flat, with a weird platform in the middle which was built for Pope John Paul II's visit to the area in 1998. That's your weird fact for the day. Today the platform fulfilled the much more important role of keeping us dry when we got off the bikes. This field is where Riders for Health train all their staff, from nurses to doctors: everyone gets to learn the basics of the CTX200 in this field with a rather bizarre past.

With the weather as it is today I thought some of the guys would struggle, but in all honesty, everyone took to the riding like ducks to water.. We're out now for our second round of training and the rain hasn't let up yet. I might take my snorkel...

To see more updates form the team check out http://bit.ly/GetonAfrica

By Ben Cope