James Island and Saloum Delta

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. 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 is where the day begins. Next is Six-Gun Battery.

2. 2. Six-Gun Battery

   The Gambia is a long, narrow country that follows its river, and Banjul sits at the mouth where the river meets the Atlantic, on a low, sandy island that feels like a sandbar with ambitions. The city was founded by the British in 1816 as Bathurst, a base to suppress the slave trade, and the Six-Gun Battery is one of the military remains from that era. It forms part of the UNESCO site called Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites, which also includes Fort Bullen on the opposite bank at Barra, and together they tell the story of the Gambia river as a route of the Atlantic slave trade and of the later effort to end it.

   Read the complete Six-Gun Battery write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Six-Gun Battery comes up about 41 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 93 km into the recorded legs you reach Saloum Delta. Next is back through Six-Gun Battery.

4. 4. back through Six-Gun Battery

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Six-Gun Battery write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Six-Gun Battery, late in the day. Next is James Island.

5. 5. 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 at James Island. That is the ride.