Maurel Frères Building and Saloum Delta

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Maurel Frères Building

   The Maurel Frères building at Albreda is a plain, solid trading house of the kind that once lined the West African coast, and it tells the commercial side of the Gambia story. Albreda was a French trading post from the late seventeenth century, wedged into a river that the British otherwise controlled, and for roughly a hundred and fifty years the French and British argued about it. France finally gave up its claim to the little enclave in 1857, but the French firms stayed. Maurel Frères, a trading house from Bordeaux, had a presence along this coast, and its warehouse here, built of brick and stone with a pitched roof, handled the trade that replaced the slave trade: groundnuts, beeswax, hides and rubber.

   Read the complete Maurel Frères Building write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Maurel Frères Building 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 40 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 92 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 Maurel Frères Building.

5. 5. Maurel Frères Building

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Maurel Frères Building write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Back at Maurel Frères Building. That is the ride.