I couldn’t do something as amazing as the Maroc Challenge without trying to capture in some way the remarkable and brilliant event into a proper blog. It’s safe to say that there is life before the Maroc Challenge, and life after Maroc Challenge. Life after is now all about doing it again, like a hippy licking the back of a frog for enlightenment I have found my spirit animal and I now shall identify as a Rally Driver.  I had no idea what I was taking on, I was wildly over prepared for a completely different event, and as such learnt some ridiculous lessons along the way. The Maroc Cha ..read more

For those of you who have slept under a rock and haven’t been gazing endlessly at my instagram, I am setting off this weekend to do the Maroc Challenge. It’s a 2,000km rally across the Atlas Mountains and into the Sahara Desert, made only slightly harder by the start finish line being another 1,000km from home. (Intro video here) I am doing it in Ventura and I thought you all should know, so temporarily have relaunched the blog updates. Ventura is 20 years old now having been registered in 2004 and 155,000 miles ago. She has had some upgrades, I admit I have become a little obsessive in my ..read more

Packing list and spare parts A long time ago I wrote a very detailed packing lists for camping trips to the deserts of Doha. That was August 2019 before the world was transformed by that snivelling fuckwit Covid. Now nearly 5 years later I am preparing for the most exciting adventure I have ever been on and my packing list is different but equally long and detailed. I spend many sleepless night envisaging scenarios where something breaks, fails or stops working and try and imagine how I might fix it. Most things I will be honest I have no idea what I am going to do, but I want to look like I ..read more

150,000 miles on the clock, 20 long hard years in the Pennines of Northern England, a comprehensive revival in England by me in 2021 specifically focussed on making the truck useable as a daily driver but now it’s time for the most fun of upgrade to Ventura. A visual, physical and performance based upgrade with a very specific intention. Vehicle Preparation for Ventura to enter her first rally – The Maroc Challenge. Let’s start with a status update of work done to Ventura to date: New Brakes – Check New steering box – Check New 1:2 transfer box upgrade – Check New front diff – Check New rad ..read more

Land Rover Defender Chassis revival Whilst Ventura has extremely good quality body work following the work done in the UK in 2022 by Stuart Brown, and the running gear is all in very good condition the chassis has always been a bit…original. By original what I mean is getting tired, needing attention and a proper cleaning and treatment to bring it up to standard. I have known this for a while, especially when all Portugese mechanics laugh at the condition the UK’s salty roads have left my chassis in, especially as Southern European Defenders don’t suffer from this fate. I searched for Ice b ..read more

Eager to embark on a real adrenaline-fuelled escapade, I have signed up for The Maroc Challenge – Spring 2024, propelling myself and my trusty companion, Ventura, into an off-road mission spanning the rugged terrain of the Atlas Mountains and the vast Moroccan desert. The Maroc Challenge sells itself as having the Spirit of a 1970’s Dakar Rally race for today’s adventurer, which sounds nothing short of a perfect for my intro to the world of Rally driving. With over 2,000 kilometres of heart-pounding dune bashing and rock crawling awaiting us over seven thrilling days, The Maroc Challenge pr ..read more

August 2023, a blazing hot summer in Portugal and Spain saw us take on a massive circumnavigation of the Iberian Peninsula. I broke the journey into three videos and here is combination of stories, instagram copy and diary entries to summarise an awesome journey. The most fun was when the boys joined me from Barcelona, through the Pyrenees and back home to Lisbon. But there was plenty of KM’s to cover heading South from lisbon and through Southern Spain to Barcelona. No Air conditioning in August in a hot old defender is precisely as uncomfortable as you might think, I bloody loved it ..read more

I have been looking for a reason to revitalise my love for telling you both a story, I moved to Portugal, I got swallowed in work and life and as a result all of this fell away and I let my blog slow to a stop. I still wrote when I did big trips, but at the end I could never bring myself to pull the images and video together into stories that I felt anyone would want to read. I tried…I posted a video of “captains log” but I didn’t really send it properly from my 2022 drive from London to Lisbon, but it wasn’t enough to excite me into finishing the two big stories of 2022. Oman and Tanzania ..read more

Have you ever been woken by a Pterodactyl?? Well I have, and I did a little wee. Last weekend I was in Tanzania and on my first night sleeping in the wild African bush I was woken in the pitch black by a flying dinosaur clawing it’s way onto the roof above me. Ripping and gnawing at the thin tin roof the extinct beast was coming through the sheet metal to tear me limb from limb. I did what any self respecting man would do, I whimpered and pulled the pillow over my head. Fortunately I was lucky enough that a slightly braver resident had equally been disturbed by the beasts terrifying claws s ..read more

Last year I shouted to my old man through his hearing trumpet about some grand plans I had to go to Oman and enjoy a beach to mountain top holiday. Omicron promptly came along and put a stop to any plans we had to get away during the balmy winter months. But not so much for the old guvnor, he promptly upgraded my plans and set off with his trusty navigator for a 2 week overlanding mission covering some 2,000 miles of Oman, most of it off road. Whilst hugely proud of my parents for jettisoning their bus passes and zimmers in favour of life off road, I was also incredibly jealous. So when the ..read more