Merry Xmas and Seasons Greetings

And an especially big thank you to the generosity of all those who have helped us raise £255 for Help for Heroes and Naomi House so far.

So what is Naomi House?

www.naomihouse.org.uk

We are proud to be fundraising for Naomi House children's hospice and jacksplace, which is one of only 4 young person’s hospices in the UK. Naomi House and jacksplace provide residential respite care, emergency and end-of-life care and bereavement support to babies, children and young adults with life-limiting conditions.

    

Located in the Hampshire countryside just outside Winchester and set in beautiful grounds, Naomi House has been providing care to life-limited children since 1997. Respite visits give families and carers the chance to rest and recover from the exhausting activity of caring for their child and the child can take part in a wide variety of experiences including play sessions, music therapy and trips out.

jacksplace is the new hospice unit that has recently been built next door to Naomi House and provides an environment specifically designed for young people with life-limiting conditions to provide as much privacy, independence and dignity as possible for the young people who come to stay.

It costs around £5 million a year to run Naomi House with less than 15% of their income coming from the Department of Health – the remainder comes from charitable donations and other fundraising.

Please join us in helping Naomi House continue the sterling work they do in providing such excellent services and care for young people like Darryl (below).

Please visit our online donation page at:

http://www.justgiving.com/teamdesertrats2

Phoebe has a makeover

With now less than a month left until the off our anxiety levels are starting to rise, but there’s a certain satisfaction in being able to cross the detail items off the “To Do” list.

We’re getting into to the nitty gritty now: the last major jobs on Phoebe - the fitting of a new clutch, fabricating brackets for the spot lights and new tyres all ‘round. The kit list is also starting to take shape with sand ladders, jerry cans, water butts, trenching tools, mess tins and webbing satchels coming from army surplus stores and attics being ransacked for general camping stuff and odds and ends. And even though Phoebe is going to have roof bars fitted, that’s still all rather a lot of stuff to be carrying…

Oh, and someone has also been having creative urges and has unleashed their artistic “talent” on poor old Phoebe…

So who are Andrew and Peter?

Peter is of an age where he should probably be old enough to know better, but is still young enough not to care and to do it anyway.

He works in IT, a career choice that causes people’s eyes to glaze over at parties and for them to turn to one side and say “So then, tell me more about your job, it sounds absolutely fascinating!” to the National Audit Office statistician sitting beside him. His English/German parentage probably accounts for his vertical altitude, his tendency to lay towels on sunloungers first thing in the morning when on holiday and his frankly ambivalent feelings towards a certain event that took place in 1966...

So why this Challenge? For some perverse reason the idea held immediate appeal when first mentioned by Andrew, a work colleague, whilst toiling over a hot VDU at the office – drive an old wreck across the Sahara? But obviously! Now with only 4 weeks to go the reality of what faces them is just starting to sink in (just like the needles involved in the multitude of dratted injections required for numerous vaccinations).

The "Didwepackeverything  and didyoupickupthepassportsandtickets and ohmygodivelefttheovenon" checklist is just a little bit longer for this trip than it would be for a couple of weeks touring in Mainland Europe...

Andrew, with his chronological advantage and the fact that all this was his idea in the first place, is very much the senior partner and the brains behind Team Desert Rats, which he conveys through his gravitas and sensible, mature no-nonsense approach. His somewhat convoluted background brings another nationality to the mix, making Team Desert Rats sound like the opening line for an old-time stereotypical joke; “There’s these blokes, right, English, German an’ Italian. An’ they go for a drive…”

Andrew lives his life by a maxim that sets forth a universal truth that has gained credence through his own long personal experience, namely that; "Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional".

Not unconventionally however, Andrew has also been working in IT for a number of years, but has never found it easy answering the question "So what is it that you actually do?" Actually, what he really wanted to be was a pilot like his father, but that's another story...

Born in Italy, Andrew speaks Italian fluently, French pretty well and understands Spanish. With English he struggles, but gets by. As a young lad, he lived in Libya and Nigeria, and spent holidays in Niger, Kenya and The Gambia as well as travelling to South Africa on business. Can we perhaps see a theme starting to develop here?

"Let's drive to Africa. Better still, let's take the Sahara Desert route." was the initial suggestion to Peter. Since that moment and since the moment that Peter, having gone away briefly to mull it over, came back and agreed, it has been an exciting but anxious time.

This then marked the inception of their odyssey…

Big thanks on a small scale

A big thank you to all the 3mm Society members who answered an appeal on the Society forum and donated 6 carrier bags of “stuff” and £25 in cash at the recent West Byfleet meet.

Our intention is that once we have stashed and lashed all our gear into and onto Phoebe we are going to fill up any remaining nooks and crannies with assorted oddments that will be of use to schools in The Gambia, as even the basic essentials can be hard to come by there. 

So the bags of “stuff” that people are giving us contain "drawer clutter" - pens, pencils, rulers, compass/protractors, calculators etc… and this will all be donated to a school once we get to Banjul.

lolcats

Phoebe has a date with the Man from the Ministry

So, just how much car do you get for a hundred nicker these days then?

Our first impressions were mixed, she looked ok if a little grubby, not too much body rust, quite a few scratches and knocks maybe, but no major dents. The interior is dirty with empty drinks cans and fag ends under the seats, but all the trim is complete. Central locking is u/s and the driver’s door won’t open, so getting to the driver’s seat consists of either a contorted slide across the centre console, or a “Dukes of Hazard” stylie through the open window.

Despite at least a month of standing idle she starts on first turn of the key, so we gleefully pop the bonnet to take a look. After a few minutes tick-over is smooth, there’s no smoke and no major knocks or vibrations. The engine bay is reasonably tidy and all the bits seem to be there. Although there are a few 12v wires that have been cut, which is worrying, and the radiator header tank cap has been replaced with what on closer inspection turns out to be half a tennis ball held in place by a plastic oil bottle cap that jams against the underside of the bonnet when it’s shut. Hmm.

Bidding our farewells to the Valleys we head back down to the M4. After a quick pit stop to check that nothing has fallen off, to put in a bit of fuel, check the oil and give Andrew some first impressions, we head out of Wales. She accelerates well, the clutch and gears are smooth and she handles well through corners. Later reports from the “pursuit car” behind state that the handling and road attitude looked fine through corners and that there was no smoke, even on heavy acceleration. There are no major vibrations, wobbles or slop in the steering and she both pulls and brakes in a straight line. She hits 70 at a respectable pace and then it’s a nice comfortable cruise to the yard in Melksham.

Unless there are some major hidden nasties waiting for us in the engine or drivetrain, it would appear that we seem to have got ourselves something of a bargain! :-)

 

With the expert skills and assistance of the Team Desert Rats Support Group (Peter, Mark and Craig – thanks guys, we owe you) the overhaul has included a new rocker cover gasket to cure a major oil leak, a new water pump (the old one was held on with a Ziploc cable tie and some old garden fence wire), half the exhaust system, brake disks, pads, shoes, oil flush/change, the fitting of a CD radio so that we can chill to some chunes and lastly a few bits and pieces required to “decontinentalise” Phoebe so that she will get through the UK MOT. Which on the second attempt, she does.

(We discovered that the service offered by some home engine-tuning companies these days is rubbish.)
  

A big shout goes to Garage on The Hill in Melksham for a very generous 50% reduction for the MOT and the corrective work and Melksham Tyre Supplies for donating 4 new Cooper Tires.

Andrew now has a few ideas as to what our colour scheme should look like…

Launch Party - July 2010

The Launch Party is the annual kick-off for Julians' various challenges, organised by the man himself (at left) and set in a secret location on a remote hillside in darkest Devon - a two-day gathering where past challengers gather to swap stories, meet up with old friends and scare the newbies witless with wild and outlandish tales from the Dark Continent - and where it starts to dawn on us newbies just what it is that we've got ourselves into...
 
Some of the "old hands" are on their second or even third challenges and there are also splinter factions who have now spin-off their own challenges. It would appear that wherever you might feel like driving an old banger to, be it Africa, the Artic Circle, Transylvania or ex-Soviet Republics, there is a group that will cater for you.
 
Everybody receives their welcome pack and the various challenges break off into groups for briefings, Q&A sessions, do's & dont's and everybody begins sizing up the other people that we're going to be spending 3 weeks and nearly 4,000 miles in the company of. With the serious stuff out of the way, the party begins...

 

So who is Phoebe?

Phoebe is 23 years old and comes from Sweden (although originally from Germany). She's been knocked about quite a bit, has been used and abused by a string of men and was now in the process of being dumped, just casually cast aside... 

Andrew came across her during one of his habitual late-night trawls of dubious and dingy internet sites, and on seeing her picture (we could see that she looked like a bit of a goer) we both knew that we just had to have her.

Yes, she ticked all the boxes; cheap (bidding on her auction was then at about £20), Left Hand Drive (but yes ok, she's on Swedish registration plates which might pose a problem), and as an Audi 100 saloon there should be plenty of internal stowage space, I'd have a reasonable chance of fitting my oversize frame into the driving seat comfortably for a few thousand miles, a 1.8 petrol engine should be just about powerful enough for the terrain we'll be going through (although on balance a diesel might possibly have been preferable) and Audi usually build (fingers crossed) reliable cars.


One quick early-morning eBay snipe and she's a snip at just £102.


We'd been searching for a cheap LHD car for quite a while, hence Andrew's internet trawling, but after months of unsuccessful searching we were at the early stages of planning to buy a wreck in Belgium and then having to trailer it back over. Whatever it says on the entry forms - without the car you're just not in the event yet and time was marching on... A relief therefore to find that we'd only have to take a short trip on the M4 and up to the Valleys of South Wales to collect our wheels and, once the relevant paperwork was in place -  driveable. :-)

And there she is, our first view of our new companion.

So what is the Banjul Challenge?

The 3 week Banjul Challenge is the worlds first-ever Banger Challenge that has spawned so many others and is now in its 8th year.

In December 2002 the first group of hopeful souls left the UK in a motley collection of vehicles, optimistically believing that the (dis)organiser Julian Nowill knew what he was doing, where he was going and had substance and experience behind his words. Despite later finding out to the contrary, this first event was a great success and most of the 42 Teams even made it to Banjul.

So why a "Banger" Challenge? Well, the event rules state that entrants' vehicles must cost no more than £100 to purchase, and although this rule is applied more "in spirit" rather than "in fact", past Challenges have seen ice-cream vans, 2CVs, VW Beetles and a whole host of aged vehicles that should by all rights be quietly rusting in peace at a local scrapyard, rather than being thrashed for thousands of miles under the merciless desert sun.

The Banjul Challenge heads South through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Senegal, arriving at Banjul in The Gambia. The route travels mostly on tarmac roads, but the highlight is the two-day off-road crossing of the Sahara Desert. The journey is approximately 3700 miles and can comfortably be covered in three weeks (if all goes well). Those in a hurry have completed in under two weeks, but that is missing the point, really. This is NOT a race. There is so much of interest en-route that it makes no sense to rush your travels.

The Challenge really starts in Southern Spain, where hotel accommodation is provided. The Road Book provides the clues as the Participants bond over a beer (or two) in the hotel bar, and form into travelling groups for the journey South. Ahead lies Sand, Sea and... even more sand. Experience the heat of the desert sun, and the challenge of nursing a knackered car all the way to destinations that most people would only consider flying to.

This Challenge is only open to Left-Hand Drive vehicles. The route can be completed by almost any vehicle, and there is no distinct advantage to having 4x4 drive (except when others are stuck in the sand!). It is a condition of entry that All vehicles MUST be donated to the Control Committee in The Gambia. The vehicles are auctioned and the funds raised are distributed to local worthy causes. This is the only legitimate way to ensure that the best price is obtained and that the funds are distributed appropriately. Nasty things do happen to those who might flout this requirement, because it is illegal to sell your vehicle privately.

(Julian's official site can be found at: http://www.dakarchallenge.co.uk/ )