An African adventure

Nov 13 2007 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Emma Pinch meets a modern day explorer who has published a book of his travels

AS FRAN SANDHAM expertly arranged his hardbacks into a pyramid-shaped pile, he looked out on to the grey London street and sighed.

One day, he promised himself, he would be writing books, not stacking them. His would be stuffed with adventure, blazing sunshine and dangerous, unfamiliar landscapes.

It’s a Boy’s Own fantasy that most people have had at one time or another, but one that is gradually displaced by the weight of work, family, mortgages and bills.

But bookshop worker Fran, who grew up in Thingwall, Wirral, is one of the tiny minority to untangle themselves from the rat-race and follow his dream.

This month sees the publication of his book, Traversa, humorously chronicling his 3,000- mile solo trek alone across the vast breadth of Africa.

After deciding he’d do it, at the age of 30, his first step was finding a route rough enough to offer the reader a steady supply of dangerous thrills.

“When I was about six, I was in hospital for two months and Tarzan became my hero. I liked reading about the African explorers, like Stanley and Livingstone,” says Fran.

“It left an impression that Africa was the most dangerous and adventurous place to go.”

His first nerve-testing challenge was raising the £2,000 necessary to fund his adventure.

“The pay in book shops isn’t that great and I spent a year and a half living on carrots, walking miles to work to save money on buses, and not going out, every penny going to the light at the end of the tunnel,” he recalls.

Finally, on February 21, 1997, he flew to Namibia, armed with his cooker, malaria tablets, map and compass, tools and trusty Walkman for company.

The first leg of his epic took him along the 150-mile Skeleton Coast.

It was a great place to start – relatively cool and filled with the breath-taking sights beloved of BBC nature programmers.

“The coast was very, very beautiful,” he says.

“On the first night when sunset was approaching, the sea was like molten silver, rushing in from the Falklands across the Atlantic.”

But 20 miles inland, the vista dramatically changed.

The shimmering African heat gradually became skin-searing. Fran was carrying 80lbs of kit over 60 miles of desert, where surface temperatures boiled at 70°C.

“It was like walking in a furnace,” he says.

“I had ditched every part of my kit I could, including the cooker and fuel I’d brought, but I couldn’t ditch the 12 litres of water.

“It was the only time I thought, ‘this is going to kill me’.”

So in Topnaars, Namibia, he bought a donkey from traders in a village to carry his gear, while he walked alongside.