Ruins of San Domingo and Saloum Delta

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Ruins of San Domingo

   Before the French and the British came to this stretch of the Gambia, the Portuguese were here, and the ruins of San Domingo are what is left of their presence. Portuguese traders and settlers moved up the river in the sixteenth century, married into local families and built a small community with a chapel, a handful of houses and storehouses on the north bank near Juffureh. They traded cloth, iron and beads for wax, hides, ivory and slaves, and their descendants, often of mixed ancestry, became middlemen for later European traders. What survives is a fragment of wall, the outline of a chapel or church and some brick foundations in a patch of ground under baobab and mango trees.

   Read the complete Ruins of San Domingo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Ruins of San Domingo 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 Ruins of San Domingo.

5. 5. Ruins of San Domingo

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Ruins of San Domingo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Back at Ruins of San Domingo. That is the ride.