Episode 180: Ellie Mitchell-Heggs

Project Cycle Africa. 10,000kms From Rwanda to Cape Town

10,000km Solo Across Africa

There are bike adventures, and then there are adventures where the bike is almost secondary to everything else happening around it. Ellie Mitchell-Heggs’ nine-month solo ride across Africa falls firmly into the second category.

Ellie is an international development professional who spent years working with local NGOs in Cameroon and Zambia before returning to the UK. Her dad grew up in what was then Northern Rhodesia, and so understandably Africa shaped a big chunk of both her career and her sense of identity. This adventure served as a way of pulling all those threads together, allowing Ellie to reconnect with Africa and discover the ccontinent from the saddle. It was also something she dreamt about doing for years.

Her bikepacking experience started far more modestly with a trip down the Vélodyssée. Ellie loved taking in the west coast of France with her cousin. As she says they had all the gear and no idea, but she loved it. From there, the appetite for bigger trips grew, and when her project at a UK charity came to a natural end in 2025, the window opened and she realised the Africa trip could actually happen.

The ride itself

Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa. Each country listed was one that Ellie got to discover and each was very different. Rwanda was intense, the hills were definitely relentless right from day one. Ellie chose to start the ride there thinking that a cyclist would be welcomed a bit more warmly than say in Cape Town. But the reactions to a solo foreign cyclist in rural areas weren’t always what she expected. She had some concerns crossing over into Uganda but by contrast, it was an immediate relief. Ellie was recieved warmly by those she met and it helped her recalibrate her assumptions iommediately.

Tanzania brought the most memorably and awful 70 kilometres of the whole trip: a stretch through Rufiji National Park where tsetse flies swarmed her bike for the entirety of the section. They were incessant, biting through her clothes and tracking her the entire way. She arrived at the next village in tears, flapping wildly, as bemused locals came over to help swat them away.

Malawi offered dense, friendly village life and roadside fried chicken. Zambia tested her physically more than almost anywhere, with 100 to 120 kilometre days in brutal dry-season heat leaving her one T-shirt crispy with dried salt by morning.

From Zimbabwe south, Ellie realised she was in Overlander territory. The campsites became better, there was more space and a lot more solitude as well with each destination far less populated and the riding more isolated.

The Namibian desert brought with it some very technical riding thrugh gravel, sand, and heat. It required a different sense of focus as well to constantly be reading the road surface.

South Africa’s west coast delivered what turned out to be the most unexpectedly punishing stretch withheadwinds so relentless Ellie found herself pedalling hard just to move downhill. It was demoralising realising she was so close to the finish as well. The day she rolled into Cape Town itself was punctuated with a bizarre escort with what Ellie describes as a cycling dad, and another cyclist on a unicycle of all things!

Visiting 100 NGOs

Ellie’s adventure was overlayed with another sense of purpose as she planned to visit as many NGOs, social enterprises and community run organisations throughout the journey. With each visit to a capital city Ellie scheduled a whole week of meetings, This typically meant visiting nine or ten organisations in five days and spending times in particular learning about the local NGOs, social enterprises and community groups working in education, youth development and gender equality. Over the course of the trip Ellie met with more than 100 of them across ten countries.

The conversations were, she says, consistently energising and Ellie found that looking forward to these meetings would spur her on when the cycling got tough on the road. Many of the founders she met had started their organisations out of direct personal experience of the problem they were trying to address. They were resourceful and frequently unable to articulate from the outside just how much impact they were actually having. Part of Ellie’s role in those conversations was simply helping them see it and that came with many having the ‘lightbulb moment’ for themselves.

Tumaini, an organisation in Eldoret, Kenya really stood out to Ellie in particular. It was started by a man working out of a tank, providing guidance to street youth. Fifteen years on, he now runs a full centre where young people can complete school, train in trades, find work and where young mothers can also study while their children are looked after on site.

Grief on the road

Partway through the journey, Ellie’s father became seriously ill. She paused the trip to fly home and spend three weeks with him. During the journey she was sharing photos and videos of the route, and to be there in person and talk through her experiences with him was especially special. Her father had grown up in Africa and this journey was very much dedicated to him.

After returning back to AFrica, Ellie was four days’ ride from Windhoek when he passed away. By chance or fate, depending on how you look at it, a couple she’d befriended in Zambia, Ben and Lena, arrived in Windhoek at the same moment. They crossed the Namibian desert together which Ellie said turned out to be a great experience, being able to have them there during a particular tough pesonal time as she worked through the initial grief of her father passing.

I loved chatting with Ellie and hearing all about her incredible adventure. With each guest interview I do, I feel I learn a lot more about the world we live in. You can follow her future adventures via her instagram page – @ProjectCycleAfrica

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