Return of swamp thing

Whatever happened to the great age of exploration? Two hundred years ago the likes of Mungo Park could hitch a ride up an African river and make names for themselves as great pioneers. Nowadays, it's even hard to make that sort of thing exotic if you throw in a search for a mythical swamp monster.

That's the problem encountered by the Centre for Fortean Zoology, who are hunting for a giant crocodile-snake-dinosaur thing called the Ninki-Nanka (this is how it might look) in Mungo Park's old stamping ground of Gambia.

The old days where the CFZ were popularly perceived as a bunch of slightly strange middle-aged blokes with beards are long gone

they boldly declare before setting off. But the group's blog of their experiences remains a tragicomic diary in which they relate their adventures with the earnest good humour you'd expect of, well, a bunch of slightly strange middle-aged blokes with beards.