Fort Bullen and Saloum Delta starting at Barra

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Fort Bullen

   Take the ferry from Banjul and the first thing you see across the water is a low fort squatting at the river mouth, its cannon still pointing out toward the Atlantic. Fort Bullen guards the northern bank of the Gambia, in Barra, and it was built by the British in 1826 to keep watch on the slave ships that kept slipping past after Britain had outlawed the trade. The brick walls are modest and the guns are old, but the position says everything: whoever held this bank held the river, and the river was the Gambia's only real road into the interior.

   Read the complete Fort Bullen write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Fort Bullen is where the day begins. Next is James Island.

2. 2. James Island

   A rock in the Gambia river has been renamed three times, and each name tells you a chapter. In 1651, the Duchy of Courland, a small Baltic state, built a fort on the island and called it St Andrew's. The British took it ten years later and renamed it James Island, after the Duke of York, and it passed back and forth between the British, French and pirates, a base for the trade in enslaved Africans, and later a fort and a mission. In 2011 the Gambian government renamed it Kunta Kinteh Island, after the hero of Alex Haley's novel Roots, who is said to have been taken from the village of Juffureh on the riverbank, close by. Whether or not the story of Kunta Kinte is literally true, the island has become a powerful symbol of the slave trade, and the ruins of the fort, with its crumbling walls and cannons, are a sober sight. The island and the related sites on the shore were listed as a World Heritage property in 2003.

   Read the complete James Island write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   James Island comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Saloum Delta.

3. 3. Saloum Delta

   The Saloum Delta is where the river Saloum and its arms dissolve into a maze of mangrove channels, sandbanks and low islands before meeting the Atlantic, about halfway between Dakar and the Gambian border. It is a flat, watery, shimmering place, where the horizon is a line of mangroves and the only things standing taller than a man are baobabs and the occasional village water tower. Locals call the narrow creeks bolongs, and they wind through the delta like veins.

   Read the complete Saloum Delta write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Saloum Delta. Next is back through James Island.

4. 4. back through James Island

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete James Island write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through James Island, late in the day. Next is Fort Bullen.

5. 5. Fort Bullen

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Fort Bullen write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Fort Bullen. That is the ride.