Good morning, I suppose even by never Strait's Farr's entirely rambling credentials of late in terms of my travels across the

cycling world this one is straying this episode strays extremely far i've ended up right now in a tiny

slice of rainforest in the middle of the jardin de plant in the capital city the administrative

capital city of benin benin which is a country in West Africa,

and right next to Togo and Nigeria. It's just a thin slither of a country, really,

with 100 metres of coastline and a deep interior that goes right up to the border with Bikina Faso

and Niger. And I'm here because it has one of the best established

and best organized bike races in the entire continent of Africa. You will have heard, of course,

of the Tour de Rwanda, and you'll know all about that, especially since Rwanda hosted the

World Championships last year. But little known to me, and I'm sure to you, unless you've been

lucky enough to visit this country,

is the Tour de Benin, which has been running off and on for the best part of 30 years.

And I arrived in Benin as the guest of the organisation a couple of days ago and I'm just getting

my bearings. But so far far let me tell you it is

completely magnificent and I look up at the canopy of huge leaves towering above me in this

little slice of original rainforest here and just for the first time since I've arrived in this tropical

country it's starting to rain and I can hear little patters of raindrops and I tell

you what it's a blessed relief anyway welcome to Benin. Music I'm standing underneath the mightiest tree I've ever seen actually. It's an Iroko tree.

It's according to the information that I'm reading in front of me, it's this one's 40 metres tall,

but it's really the absolute immensity of the tree trunk which I mean if you're trying

to think about how many people it would require with their arms outspread to

circum to hug this tree effectively I think it would be 10 people it's

...