Friends and family. One love, one heart, one Mann, yours truly has gone and decided to buy himself a bicycle with which to travel from Nairobi to Cape Town - 6000kms, 7 countries and roughly 60 days riding SOLO. 

My aim is to get to Cape Town in under 2 months, under 60 days leaving on the 13th April from Nairobi. This is a mammoth (most likely very unrealistic) task of 100kms a day and well worth putting some money into. Please help my journey and energy reserves, by dipping into your financial ones!

This is pretty mad and some may be asking why? 

There are two very big reasons for me doing this – my friend Charlie Watkins and my Dad Edward Mann. Both are sadly no longer with us. But, I am excited to be supporting The Charlie Watkins foundation, helping future at risk young people and Brake, supporting families like ours deal with tragedy.
(Unfortunately, I can only raise money for one charity on JustGiving, but you can be a legend and match your stake here for CWF - Very simple as their donations are also through JG so no extra forms - https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/charlie-watkins-foundation)

The focus of this page and my efforts are for Brake, a charity that my sister, Georgia, ran the London marathon for 6 years ago. Brake do amazing work especially for the support of bereaved families who have lost relatives in road accidents. This is something agonisingly tangible for my family and me. Brake, a national charity, also do great work to decrease road mortalities and injuries.
5 people die on our roads every day and hundreds more are seriously injured. Please help me, help Brake in preventing more families having to go through the agony experienced by our family.
Visit www.brake.org.uk to find out more about their life-saving work.

My father was a true gent and always completely selfless in his actions; so to keep such a inspiring person's memory and legacy alive in this small way is a cause worth donating something small for. My dad was a great sportsman certainly not one for cycling (or swimming...), but I reckon he would be very amused to hear about my journey, camping and surviving against Africa's deadliest on its toughest roads. If you are interested in following this frankly ridiculous undertaking I will be setting up some kind of website and here is my new instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mannontherun8/ 

This is all on my way back to South Africa - where his mother and my grandmother called home. This will be my first time in South Africa, a homecoming of sorts and I will be using this as added motivation. I am sure my old man would be worried about all this; but he'll be on this journey with me along with Charlie and I am very proud to be doing this for them. 

Charlie and my Dad both knew each other very well as neighbours and lifelong friends so this is particularly special and poignant. Please do go visit the Charlie Watkins foundation website too (https://www.cwfoundation.co.uk/); what Charlie's family have done in his memory is courageous and inspiring; and deserving of huge support. 

By donating you honour two great men's memory. YOU CAN HELP by donating on their website which is also through JustGiving (remember no extra bank details) sadly I cant split the proceeds on JG so please please also donate there and send them your best - https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/charlie-watkins-foundation

For everyone now in work and especially for those in tech sales making stacks - it would be great if you could put in what would be a couple of pints or slim line vodka tonics in both charities. If you read all of this and got to this point then there shouldn't be any other reasons for you to not donate - so just do it. 

Updates to follow x