On 2 July 2022, 10 mountain bike riders, optimistically described here as middle aged but only if they push through to 120 years old plus, will pedal out of Harare in the general direction of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast in the fifth and toughest yet edition of the Old Legs Tour, to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe's pensioners.

As is our want, we’ll ride on the roads less travelled, 3000 plus kilometers of them, mostly dirt. We’ll ride through a town called Gokwe, into the wilds of Chizarira, via Milibizi and alongside the mighty Zambezi, and into Victoria Falls for our first rest day. And then across epic Vic Falls Bridge and into the back of beyond that is western Zambia and then on to the Angolan border, back across the Zambezi River at Katima Mulilo, and then down into the Namibian hinterland via Grootfontein and past Etosha National Park, through the Namib Desert taking the scenic route via Desolation Valley, Spitzkoppe and the White Lady Bushman and the Brandberg

Massif. Then we’ll head across to the iconic Skeleton Coast, south through the aptly named St Nowhere, Cape Cross and the Dead Sea Swimhole towards our finish line at Swakopmund. I am exhausted just having typed all of that, but also so excited.

The Old Legs is an especially apt description for this year’s peloton. Al Watermeyer will be the senior man, aged 73 years young, with Eric de Jong the youngest at just 63 years old. And in between we have Adam Selby, Mike Reimer, Rob Cloete from Zimbabwe, Alan Crundall, Pete Brodie and Mark Johnson from Australia, and Nik Bellwald from Switzerland. Eeeish! Already I can hear bones creaking. And in the Support team - Jenny, Linda, Ryan, Russ Dawson, Andy Louw Evans and Gary.

As always, we are riding to help the generation that built a country, a generation who have lost their wealth and had their pensions reduced to zero by thirty years of economic stupidity and two bouts of hyper-inflation. Doctors, lawyers, farmers, plumbers and engineers, after a lifetime of hard toil and saving have been left with zero. And worse than that, many Zimbabwe’s pensioners have also lost their families and safety nets, scattered to the furthest corners of the world to try and start their lives over, often from scratch, leaving them in the invidious position of not being able to be there for their parents. Without charity, many pensioners would have nothing.

HISTORY

The Old Leg ethos is to have fun, to do good, and above all, to do epic. In 2018 on their first Tour, the Old Legs rode from Harare to Cape Town on the roads less travelled, via the Kalahari, the Karoo and a town called Hotazel. On this first Tour, we were able to raise $71000 for our pensioners. We pedaled 3186 km and our oldest rider was 72.

The next year 2019, to make up for choosing a slack, downhill destination, the Old Legs Tour rode from Harare to Tanzania, to the top of Kilimanjaro, the world’s highest free-standing mountain, raising $100,000.

In 2020, the Old Legs Tour rode the Lockdown Tour, braving lions, elephants, tsetse flies and the coronavirus whilst pedaling 3035 km around the circumference of Zimbabwe, through the wildest wildlife areas and on the toughest dirt roads, raising over $130,000 for Zimbabwe’s beleaguered pensioners. And when the Zim contingent crossed the finish line, the South African Old Legs team started pedalling - 2400 km from Durban KZN to Lambert's Bay on the West Coast, over every mountain pass in South Africa. At 74 years young, Bruce Fivaz was oldest rider in the peloton.

And in 2021, we rode the toughest Tour yet; the Silverback Tour, which took us 3000 km from Harare to Uganda's Impenetrable Forest to find the gorillas in the mist. We were on the road for 30 days and 3020 km, climbing 36,000 meters, riding through Africa’s wildest and most rugged parts. The oldest member of our riding group was 72, living proof that you are never too old to do epic.

Help us help them by supporting our epic cause and our epic adventure- 10 pairs of Old Legs pedalling 3000 km on mountain bikes on dust and dirt and through wild animals, across some of Africa’s harshest landscapes.

Follow the Old Legs Tour on Facebook or on www.oldlegstour.com. But please be warned, we ride slower than paint dries.