Day 19, 99km to Stone Bridge (Abeyda)


Today was the toughest day yet. Long, hot and challenging – particularly because of road corrugations and because of afternoon heat.

The first 6km weren’t too bad as we left camp and followed a canal on a road without many corrugations. Unfortunately this changed as we crossed our first “teff” field. We essentially crossed a field on carved out trail. The dirt had dried, cracked and those cracks then became corrugations. I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it, so ended up going slow – pound, pound, pound. It wasn’t much quicker than walking but with a stop every now and then, I slowly got further. I think some others tried variations of going faster or standing up.


As we crossed these fields, we would occasionally come past a few huts grouped together and at 35km was an abandoned railway and place to get coke stop. After this back to the fields as it started getting warmer. It seemed like forever before we came to lunch at 56km.

Shortly thereafter another fun town to cross and then more heat, fields and corrugation. TDA had put a refresh stop at 76km under a big tree. This helped get a bit more energy before I pushed on to reach camp about 5pm. A long and most difficult day so far. I’m glad I was able to make it.

Comments are closed.