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Short Way Up

Steve Wilson is a remarkable man. Not only does he have a spirit of adventure  but has developed a true empathy for the people of the South Luangwa Valley.  His fascinating journey around Southern Africa on his faithful old Ariel motorbike  will soon be published for you all to read. For every copy of this book that is sold, Steve and the publishers will be donating  50 pence to Project Luangwa. You can order the book from Waterstones and from  Haynes Publishing.

No film crew. No ‘fixers’ for the  borders. No 4WD back-up. No  back-up at all, in fact. Except for  a man deep in rural Gloucestershire  with a shed-full of old bike spares  for a simple, rugged 50-year-old,  British single cylinder motorbike . .  . and its even older and arguably  simpler rider . . . Author Steve Wilson wanted to do a  final Real Run on two wheels before  the bus pass took over. A holiday with  Robin Pope Safaris in Zambia’s South  Luangwa National Park had provided  the spark. Africa’s wide, croc- and hippo- infested brown rivers, its bush-buck  and baobab trees, the marks of baboon  claws in the dust of a Series I Land  Rover’s windscreen, had all worked their  spell. But so had the impact of getting close,  even briefly, to the local subsistence  farming community. The people were  unfailingly cheerful and hospitable, but  average life expectancy was 38 years,  and their heroic, under-funded efforts  to improve their lives had been very  moving. Robin Pope and other safari  operators plough back a percentage of  their profits via Project Luangwa into  local schools, clinics and water projects.  Everyone wins, for only if the locals  become convinced of the benefits of the  camera-safari tourism will the wonderful  wildlife not be eroded by poaching. Flying out of the local airfield in a single- engine Piper Cherokee, droning over the  burning land, low enough to see the red  dirt roads running through the bush and  converging at lonely cross-roads, Steve  had a light bulb moment. He would raise  as much money as possible for the Trust,  then at his own expense ship a classic  bike out to Cape Town, and ride up  across South Africa, Botswana, into  Zambia and over to South Luangwa,  where the sponsorship money he had  raised would be released, and then he  would ride back to Cape Town The journey was 5,000 miles at a very  rough reckoning. And yes, those film star  chaps on their BMWs had just taken a  much bigger mouthful of dust, and more  power to them. But this would be The  Short Way Up. The two-wheeled  equivalent  of Slow Food, with none of the killer  deadlines the dynamic duo and their crew  had to meet. This would be just an old  Brit on old Brit iron. Ariel used to be known as The House of the Horse, and its stylized, art deco  Red Hunter motifs had been as  emblematic in their way as the 3,000- year-old Uffington White Horse on the  Oxfordshire hillside Steve set out from,  and which was now depicted on the logos  on the panniers.    The harsh natural and human environment  meant that dreams and prayers became  as necessary as food and fuel. In the end  Steve found that the real journey lay not  simply in covering the miles, but in the stories of extraordinary men and women, black and  white, whom Southern Africa, from Botswan a to Zimbabwe, had formed. And the end  of his odyssey was as unpredictable as the journey itself.