A 23-year-old cyclist from Suffolk has taken on an epic 6,000km solo ride from Nairobi to Cape Town, for two charities very close to his heart.

Film-maker Alex Mann is raising money for the road safety charity Brake, in memory of his dad, Edward, who died in a road accident on the A14 near Stowupland in 2011. His mother has lobbied the government over road safety measures, campaigning to have unsafe lay-bys closed down.

Alex is also fundraising for the Charlie Watkins Foundation, raising money to support young people with mental health problems in memory of his schoolfriend, Charlie, who died aged 22 in 2017.

Alex, from Orford and formerly from Higham on the Suffolk-Essex border, left Nairobi on April 13, aiming to get to Cape Town in under two months. He is now in Malawi.

He said: “This is a mammoth, most likely very unrealistic, task!”

His mother, Clare Greenwell, said: “He has survived a near miss with a bus, which left him concussed, badly bruised, a leg full of stitches and a broken bicycle, not to mention broken camera, laptop and phone.

“But within a week he was back in the saddle, sometimes cycling up to 160km a day when not having repeated punctures or avoiding wild animals.”

Alex has raised £4,485 so far on his Just Giving page for Brake. To support his efforts, visit his Just Giving page.