London to Lagos on an Eagle
Kunle Adeyanju, the incoming president of Rotary Club of Ikoyi Metro is riding ‘the Eagle’ from London to Lagos. Adeyanju is a biker, and his bike is the Eagle.
London to Lagos is Adeyanju’s farthest trip on a motorbike so far, but not the first. Before now, he has done the west African circuit, Lagos to Accra and back. He is on his latest bike trip to tick off one of his bucket lists.
“The ride is one of my before I die, my bucket list, one of those things I want to have accomplished before I leave this beautiful world of ours, hopefully in the next 50yrs,” Adeyanju tweeted.
Adeyanju graduated from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and joined British American Tobacco as a management trainee in Northern Nigeria. In 2004, he moved to the oil and gas sector, where he was hired as head of marketing at Oando Gas and Power and then joined Shell petroleum in 2006 as Fuels and Bitumen manager.
Shortly afterwards, with an MBA, he founded Pelicans DNO, where he is the chief operating officer. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Business Administration with a specialisation in social entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona in the United States.
He has visited about 75 countries and he is also an entrepreneur, author,
motivational speaker, blogger and cyclist.
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London to Lagos
The distance between London and Lagos is about 12,000km, to be completed within 25 days. Adeyanju is crossing 13 countries – London, France, Spain, Gibraltar, Morocc0, StLouis, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin Republic.
The tour is intended to raise awareness about polio battles in Africa. The biker is also hoping to raise money for developmental projects toward Polio. To achieve this, a GoFund account was provided to hit a target of N20 million.
Twenty percent of the money raised will go to the PolioPlus fund while the remaining 80 percent will go to the Rotary Club’s project in primary healthcare, and rural empowerment scheme when he assumes as president of his chapter of the club. The biker plans to match 10 percent of whatever amount is raised to pursue the noble cause.
The Eagle
To accomplish this escapade, Adeyanju got a Honda CB500X motorbike in London, – where X stands for the adventure model, designed for on-road and off-road capabilities, costing 6,500 pounds sterling ( N3.3 million).
The bike weighs about 200kg without any add-ons or accessories. It has a tank capacity of 17 litres, having a leap back of 5 litres emergency fuel reserve tank, with a range of 490km and on average 450km depending on driving style and weather conditions.
Adeyanju launched his journey on April 19, 2022 in London, stating that he is not expecting the ride to be easy but a risky adventure.
Based on his travel schedule of 25 days, he is expected to be in Lagos, May 13th, but plans were rescheduled as a result of the Rotary club insisting that they must host him in different cities on his routes.
Apart from the welcome he would receive in Lagos, he will be welcomed in a number of places along his route, including St Louis, Dakar, Bamako, Yamoussoukro, Abidjan, and Accra, some of which have already done so.
The timelines
On day one of his journeys, he scaled through London to Dover on a ferry, crossed the English channel to Calais, France and rode to Borge, France, a total of 745km. Day two journey traversed 702km, through Bourges France to Girona, Spain.
From the third day to the sixth day, he covered a total of 523km, from Girona to Valencia (Spain) to Algeciras and then to Gibraltar (Spain’s south coast).
He stayed at a hotel on the Marina in Algeciras where he booked his ferry ride across the Strait of Gibraltar that would take him from the port of Algeciras in Spain to Tangier in Morocco the next day.
By the seventh day of his journey, he arrived on the shores of Africa, Morocco.
On the eleventh day, he travelled from Marrakech (the Kingdom of Morocco’s fourth-largest city) via Agadir to Elouatia, all in Morocco, to Leayone through Sahara, covering a total distance of 1,217km.
He experienced weather turbulence along his route in the Sahara, ranging between strong winds and frigid temperature.
In his words,” riding on this stretch of the Sahara is riskier than on the Moroccan side, there are piles of sand on the road, and you know the sand is shifting, it’s unstable, so if you ride over them at speed you will most likely go down.”
He complained about the ill-treatment of foreigners in Mauritania(the eleventh largest country in Africa, and 90 percent of its territory is situated in the Sahara), from the hotel services to the government agencies.
“For me, Mauritania is not a country I ever want to visit again for anything, honestly in my opinion it’s next to hell. I experienced it in the hotel, restaurant, fuels station and government agencies,” he said.
Adeynju took day 16 to day 18 as rest days and servicing of his Eagle-his bike, in Senegal, where he was also hosted.
May 11 makes it the 22nd day since he embarked on the journey and he is currently in Mali.
Adeyanju has been filming his adventure in real-time by using a high tech bike camera to capture important moments of his trip.
He describes the highlight of his journey as experiencing people, and places, seeing the dynamics of different cultures in the same country, plus the courage to have the boldness to embark on some .. and not look back to regret it.
“Experiencing people, places and their cultures and seeing how cultures change even in the same country. To me, that is the beautiful key highlight of this trip. When I am old, I don’t want to look back at my life having the boldness and regret that I wished I had the courage to open as many pages in the book of our beautiful world God bestowed us”. Adeyanju said.
