12 May

We left the hotel in St Louis at about 9am and after what had happened at the border into Senegal we all just wanted to get out and into Gambia. After not even 10 miles we were stopped at a police checkpoint, he put his hand up to stop us, then motioned for us to pull over at the side of the road. He fined us the equivalent of 30 pounds each for not indicating when he pulled us over! Again this got quite heated as we know the fine for not indicating cannot be this much, with no chance of a receipt we are fully aware this is not official but we had no choice but to pay so that we could move on.

After this all went well in Senegal, the people were friendly and we were not stopped at any more checkpoints.

At 5.30pm it was still 42 degrees whilst moving and the heat got to us all, we had to stop as we couldn't physically carry on. We rested for an hour at what we believe was a lorry Customs checkpoint, they could could see we were struggling and let us rest in the shade inside their shack!

To get to the Gambian border we had about a 17 mile stretch of rough going, where there was tarmac it was completely covered in potholes. It is now starting to get dark and due to dads bike blowing a bulb back in Mauri we have one headlight between us

We were dreading the Senegalese half of the border to Gambia but all went well, both sides were really friendly and helpful

We are now in Gambia, we made it from England in 9 days!

Now we have to head for Barra to get a ferry to the south side, with still only one headlight and it being completely pitch black we had 12 miles to do on rough tracks.

We had been told the last ferry would leave at 11pm, we got there at 10.30 only to see it pulling away!

The security guard let us in the dock gates as we decided we were all so tired that we may as well stay there and get the first ferry in the morning. We each chose a bench and attempted to get comfortable!

Miles covered: 310