Suffolk pair cycle more than 8,000 miles from Ethiopia to South Africa for charity
Robin Hutchinson and Cam Wheeler spent four months on the road raising money for St Elizabeth Hospice.
Two Suffolk adventurers who cycled more than 8,000 miles from Ethiopia to South Africa say the journey was driven by family, grief and a desire to challenge perceptions of Africa.
Robin Hutchinson and Cam Wheeler spent around four months travelling by bicycle from Addis Ababa to Cape Town, documenting the expedition online under the name Four Wheels South while raising money for St Elizabeth Hospice.
The pair completed the challenge carrying their belongings on bicycles, navigating remote roads, wildlife encounters and harsh terrain along the way.
Their motivation
For Cam Wheeler, the journey also became a tribute to his brother, who died from a rare form of sarcoma aged 24.
“We wanted to do it for charity as well and a charity I think that meant something to both of us was the St Elizabeth Hospice,” he said.
“They looked after my brother in the final 10 days of his life before he sadly passed away from a rare form of sarcoma at the age of 24.”
Mr Wheeler explained that he had previously cycled part of the Cairo-to-Cape Town route in 2019 but had been forced to stop and return to work in London before completing it.
“I really wanted to continue the journey,” he said.
“So when Robin said this was his idea, I thought, okay, I think maybe this is my opportunity to go and finish the route.”
He said thoughts of his brother helped him through some of the most difficult moments of the expedition.
“For me on the particularly tough days, it was knowing that I could feel his presence there with me, sort of carrying me through on those harder days,” he said.
He added: “It meant a lot that we were both out there doing this together, but had our own reasons and our own sort of purpose.”
Mr Wheeler said he believed his brother would have thought the challenge sounded “nuts”, but also said he believed he would have been proud.
“I’d also like to think if he was still here physically, that he would have joined us for the trip or a section,” he said.
The pair were joined near the end of the route by Mr Wheeler’s father, who rode sections of the final stretch into Cape Town.
“My dad, who’s going to be 70 this year, he was so keen to ride with us,” he said.
“Seeing him pushing up the hills at the base of Table Mountain was really impressive.”
Family connection
For Robin Hutchinson, the challenge was also deeply connected to family history.
His grandparents, alongside his father and aunt, made the journey from Uganda to Cape Town by car in 1963 following Ugandan independence, with his grandfather filming the trip.
“It was a bit of a dream of mine to recreate some of those same shots,” he said.
The pair revisited locations including Victoria Falls to recreate footage captured more than six decades earlier.
Mr Hutchinson said one of the first things he did after returning to the UK was visit his 97-year-old grandfather to show him the photographs and videos.
“He was the first person I went to visit when we got back,” he said.
“I went straight from the airport to his house.”
He said some of the recreated images were so similar his grandfather initially mistook them for his own.
“There are a few of them that he thought were his, because some places really haven’t changed,” he said.
Mr Hutchinson added that some of the recreated photographs carried particular emotional weight because they featured locations connected to his late grandmother.
“My grandmother died a few years ago and there are some photos that we had recreated that had her in them,” he said.
“It was nice for him to get to see those and see my new photographs of those places next to his.”
Cycling at Sunset
Cycling at Sunset
Despite encountering bull elephants on remote roads in Botswana and spending months cycling across the continent, the pair said one of the strongest lessons from the trip was the kindness they encountered.
“One thing that we repeatedly both experience is people’s kind of innate fear of Africa,” Mr Hutchinson said.
“A big part of the reason we put the trip on Instagram and tried to document it was to continue showing people that Africa isn’t necessarily a completely big scary continent.”
He added: “We had a few issues with animals, elephants, not really many issues with humans.”
Fundraising
Although they've finished cycling, Mr Wheeler told us they've not finished fundraising yet and are hosting an event on the 3rd of June with food and live music, hoping this will be their last step in reaching their ÂŁ10,000 target.