£50 banger's epic journey
Mini mad Patrick Ford who sped off on a 4000-mile African adventure was today back in Britain after completing the road trip of a lifetime.
Patrick Ford with his MiniGarage owner Patrick, 38, from Headingley, spent months preparing the F-reg Mini Cooper, which is emblazoned from bumper to bumper with the Union Jack, for the three-week journey to Banjul in the Gambia.Mr Ford and his friend David Kirkpatrick, 30, of London, took part in the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge 2007, also known as the Ultimate Banger Challenge, to raise funds for Yorkshire Air Ambulance.The route took the pair, whose team was named Italian Job 1 after the 1969 film, down the French coast and across Spain to Gibraltar, where they sailed to Morocco before driving across the Sahara desert.More than 200 vehicles, including Ford Escorts and Land Rovers, took part in the challenge but Mr Ford's was the only Mini to be attempting the journey – and both he and Mr Kirkpatrick were surprised that it lasted the distance.He said: "The Mini lost a wheel arch, a fog light and the number plate fell off but other than that, it didn't miss a beat. Everywhere we went, everyone loved it because it was painted in the Union Jack."We spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day in a hotel in Marrakech and we spent New Year's Day in the middle of a sandstorm in the Sahara desert."It really was the experience of a lifetime. We're so privileged in England because in Africa, people live in the middle of nowhere. You can drive hundreds of miles and see nothing but donkeys, goats, camels and vultures."Then you see these little camps of straw huts, where all the families live and it really brings it home."We gave the kids little presents, like sweets and teddies. If we gave them a football to play with, they were so happy - it was like all their birthdays and Christmas had come at once."Mr Ford, who owns Princess Garage off Otley Road, bought the Mini for £50 and converted it to left-hand drive so it could be auctioned off for charity when it reached the Gambia.He and Mr Kirkpatrick have already collected more than £600 for Yorkshire Air Ambulance but hope to raise a lot more. To sponsor the Italian Job 1 team, go to www.justgiving.com/italianjob2006.
15 January 2007
Monday, 15 January 2007
the car has been sold
It raised 20,000 Dalasi which is about £400 - based on what was left of it after its hard journey, I would say its a good price! here is some information provided by the organisers as to where that money will go:-
information regarding the Charitable side of The Challenge:-
"The Gambia is a small country, as most of you now know having said 'where the ^&^$&$ is it?" - and consulted your maps! It is also a poor country that struggles with having a population the size (roughly) of Birmingham and a land area that is more the size of Scotland. More than 75% of the population are subsistence farmers and the country comes way down most league tables - except ones to do with quantities of glorious sunshine!
The government and the people of The Gambia are heavily supported by donor organisations. All the major donors (World Bank, UN, EU and so on) are here and a good deal of funding also comes from friendly Muslim and Arab countries. Add to this a myriad of smaller 'non-governmental organisations' (NGOs) and you have a rich mix with huge potential for overlap, confusion and general mayhem. Gambians are mostly a very honest bunch - but in circumstances where the culture demands that if you have resources you are expected to share them with anyone remotely related to you, AND there is a great deal of poverty, it is not surprising that funds are sometimes 'misdirected'.
Cars are among the most coveted items in the Gambian order of priorities. At the top of the shopping list for any new NGO is at least one brand new 4x4 and even the most humble executive will be ready to bend the funding rules in order to get their mits on a motor. This comes about, not least, because vehicles are seen not as the possession of the owner or the organisation but as a public good available for use - any use - that the driver can get away with. Having a vehicle also often causes more problems than it solves. Affording petrol is a major and ever present problem and as the vehicle is 'not my responsibility even though I commandeer it whenever possible' not much care is taken of it, it is driven madly on quite awful roads and breakdowns keep vehicles off the road as much as they are on.
Julian's policy of arranging for cars to be auctioned and the proceeds given to charities makes absolute sense in the circumstances already described. At the heart of the Gambian end of the Challenge there are two organisations working very closely together. The first is the Association of Small-Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET). The second is the Gambian National Olympic Committee (GNOC).
ASSET operates, as its name implies, in the tourism industry. But it is as far away from the activities of the big tour companies as can be imagined. ASSET was set up to help thousands of Gambians to scoop up more of the crumbs from the tourism table and, as one member said, to 'give a voice to the voiceless'. So it lobbies government to do more for the juice pressers, the fruit sellers, the tourist taxi drivers, the official tourist guides and people with many similar jobs, all of whom struggle to gain access to the tourists who are managed by the tour operators and the bigger ground operating companies.
When you arrive in The Gambia you will not be a 'tourist' you will be a 'traveller'. A much greater proportion of your spending will stay in The Gambia and you are likely to want to meet and spend time with the 'locals'. ASSET can help to make your stay really enjoyable. Arrangements are in hand to encourage you to stay in the smaller hotels and guest houses and to make excursions to places run by ASSET members, many of which are away from the tourist drag and which offer an interesting experience.
By contrast the GNOC is about making things work for the country's sports persons. There is huge interest and participation in sport. Those of you who have not been to a country like The Gambia will be staggered by the huge numbers of 'football pitches' - patches of bare sand - at least one in every village. Very few people can afford the kit that gets bought for kids from the age of two or three in the UK - and is replaced every birthday with the latest variation. Football boots, footballs are in very short supply and to see a goal with a net is almost unknown. The GNOC struggles hard in these circumstances to offer a variety of sporting activities and to build stadia around the country. The National Stadium, where your car will be auctioned, is an impressive building but it is the only one of its kind in the country. The GNOC is building more facilities as and where it can but if you have a sporting interest and want to do a bit more make sure you have a chat with the officials at the stadium when you are here.
ASSET and GNOC are the two organisations that are working to make sure that your trip is fun, interesting and - hopefully - well-organised. They will co-ordinate everything this end by working with the government and all the official organisations that you will bump into. They will also be arranging for Gambian charities to hear about the Challenge and to be able to apply for some of the proceeds. In addition they will also do what they can to monitor the way the money is spent in order to make sure that it goes where it was meant to go.
ASSET and the GNOC hope that you will enjoy the Challenge. You can be assured that we will do all we can to give you a good time when you reach the end of the road!!"
Grants Allocation Sub-Committee
Members of the Grants Allocation Sub-Committee are to be independent and not connected with organisations relating to children, youth or tourism i.e. they will not be associated with companies, charities or organisations that are potential beneficiaries.
Potential members to be approached are from:
• Chamber of Commerce •Gamstar Insurance Company •Standard Chartered Bank • Delloitte & Touche •Sahel Invest (reserve)
The Sub-Committee will:
ensure that the process of allocation of funds to beneficiaries is smooth, acceptable, transparent, credible and fair
receive and review applications after they have been screened by
Association of Small Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET) - in the case of Tourism applications,
Gambia National Olympic Committee (GNOC ) - in the case of Youth and Sports Development applications or
Control Group - in the case of Children’s applications
ensure that the criteria are applied appropriately to grant applications
keep accurate records of allocation of funds
Criteria for Allocation of Funds from the Auctions40% of the funds raised will be divided equally between ASSET and GNOC. The remaining 60% will be distributed to applications that fulfil the following criteria:
Non-profit making companies that are registered and are operating in The Gambia
Companies that are engaged in activities that support children, youth and sports development associations and small scale tourism projects
Organisations with a turnover less thanDalasis per annum
Applications will be passed to ASSET and GNOC (as appropriate) for preliminary review and advice
Administrative CostsAdministrative costs will be met equally from the monies donated to ASSET and GNOC
information regarding the Charitable side of The Challenge:-
"The Gambia is a small country, as most of you now know having said 'where the ^&^$&$ is it?" - and consulted your maps! It is also a poor country that struggles with having a population the size (roughly) of Birmingham and a land area that is more the size of Scotland. More than 75% of the population are subsistence farmers and the country comes way down most league tables - except ones to do with quantities of glorious sunshine!
The government and the people of The Gambia are heavily supported by donor organisations. All the major donors (World Bank, UN, EU and so on) are here and a good deal of funding also comes from friendly Muslim and Arab countries. Add to this a myriad of smaller 'non-governmental organisations' (NGOs) and you have a rich mix with huge potential for overlap, confusion and general mayhem. Gambians are mostly a very honest bunch - but in circumstances where the culture demands that if you have resources you are expected to share them with anyone remotely related to you, AND there is a great deal of poverty, it is not surprising that funds are sometimes 'misdirected'.
Cars are among the most coveted items in the Gambian order of priorities. At the top of the shopping list for any new NGO is at least one brand new 4x4 and even the most humble executive will be ready to bend the funding rules in order to get their mits on a motor. This comes about, not least, because vehicles are seen not as the possession of the owner or the organisation but as a public good available for use - any use - that the driver can get away with. Having a vehicle also often causes more problems than it solves. Affording petrol is a major and ever present problem and as the vehicle is 'not my responsibility even though I commandeer it whenever possible' not much care is taken of it, it is driven madly on quite awful roads and breakdowns keep vehicles off the road as much as they are on.
Julian's policy of arranging for cars to be auctioned and the proceeds given to charities makes absolute sense in the circumstances already described. At the heart of the Gambian end of the Challenge there are two organisations working very closely together. The first is the Association of Small-Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET). The second is the Gambian National Olympic Committee (GNOC).
ASSET operates, as its name implies, in the tourism industry. But it is as far away from the activities of the big tour companies as can be imagined. ASSET was set up to help thousands of Gambians to scoop up more of the crumbs from the tourism table and, as one member said, to 'give a voice to the voiceless'. So it lobbies government to do more for the juice pressers, the fruit sellers, the tourist taxi drivers, the official tourist guides and people with many similar jobs, all of whom struggle to gain access to the tourists who are managed by the tour operators and the bigger ground operating companies.
When you arrive in The Gambia you will not be a 'tourist' you will be a 'traveller'. A much greater proportion of your spending will stay in The Gambia and you are likely to want to meet and spend time with the 'locals'. ASSET can help to make your stay really enjoyable. Arrangements are in hand to encourage you to stay in the smaller hotels and guest houses and to make excursions to places run by ASSET members, many of which are away from the tourist drag and which offer an interesting experience.
By contrast the GNOC is about making things work for the country's sports persons. There is huge interest and participation in sport. Those of you who have not been to a country like The Gambia will be staggered by the huge numbers of 'football pitches' - patches of bare sand - at least one in every village. Very few people can afford the kit that gets bought for kids from the age of two or three in the UK - and is replaced every birthday with the latest variation. Football boots, footballs are in very short supply and to see a goal with a net is almost unknown. The GNOC struggles hard in these circumstances to offer a variety of sporting activities and to build stadia around the country. The National Stadium, where your car will be auctioned, is an impressive building but it is the only one of its kind in the country. The GNOC is building more facilities as and where it can but if you have a sporting interest and want to do a bit more make sure you have a chat with the officials at the stadium when you are here.
ASSET and GNOC are the two organisations that are working to make sure that your trip is fun, interesting and - hopefully - well-organised. They will co-ordinate everything this end by working with the government and all the official organisations that you will bump into. They will also be arranging for Gambian charities to hear about the Challenge and to be able to apply for some of the proceeds. In addition they will also do what they can to monitor the way the money is spent in order to make sure that it goes where it was meant to go.
ASSET and the GNOC hope that you will enjoy the Challenge. You can be assured that we will do all we can to give you a good time when you reach the end of the road!!"
Grants Allocation Sub-Committee
Members of the Grants Allocation Sub-Committee are to be independent and not connected with organisations relating to children, youth or tourism i.e. they will not be associated with companies, charities or organisations that are potential beneficiaries.
Potential members to be approached are from:
• Chamber of Commerce •Gamstar Insurance Company •Standard Chartered Bank • Delloitte & Touche •Sahel Invest (reserve)
The Sub-Committee will:
ensure that the process of allocation of funds to beneficiaries is smooth, acceptable, transparent, credible and fair
receive and review applications after they have been screened by
Association of Small Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET) - in the case of Tourism applications,
Gambia National Olympic Committee (GNOC ) - in the case of Youth and Sports Development applications or
Control Group - in the case of Children’s applications
ensure that the criteria are applied appropriately to grant applications
keep accurate records of allocation of funds
Criteria for Allocation of Funds from the Auctions40% of the funds raised will be divided equally between ASSET and GNOC. The remaining 60% will be distributed to applications that fulfil the following criteria:
Non-profit making companies that are registered and are operating in The Gambia
Companies that are engaged in activities that support children, youth and sports development associations and small scale tourism projects
Organisations with a turnover less than
Applications will be passed to ASSET and GNOC (as appropriate) for preliminary review and advice
Administrative CostsAdministrative costs will be met equally from the monies donated to ASSET and GNOC
Thursday, 11 January 2007
Back on home soil!
We all arrived in the early hours of this morning, everyone had their fingers crossed that the Gambians built better runways than roads as the plane took off. Driving from the airport this morning in the dark was very strange, we are so used to driving at night at around 20 mph, incase a stray donkey or goat jumps out infront of you, or a taxi could be coming the other way with no lights, or a massive pothole could be in the middle of the road, so cruising at 50-60mph felt a bit un-nerving and I found myself dodging dark coloured manhole covers and any change in colour in the tarmac. Its going to take a few days for it to all sink in I guess, andwe understand the little mini will be going into the auction on sunday so i'll keep you all posted on how much it fetches. Just want to say a huge thank you to all the people who have helped raise money and sponsor our crazy journey, Advanced Chemical Etching and Demand technology, Qualitech, 3M , Minimail, Powerful Metal Manufacturing LTD and the staff and pupils at Abbey grange school for the fund raising for the yorkshire air ambulance - I'll update the final total soon.
We are planning to upload all the photos from all the teams on one big website which might take a week or two (i have about 200 photos alone!) but I will post it on here, also we had a professional film crew travelling in our convoy through the desert and they will try to sell the documentry to a television station at some stage, the apparently have video footage of the mini airbourne! (and a few heated arguements between us and Mr Hadrami- our hapless local guide!).
more to come
We are planning to upload all the photos from all the teams on one big website which might take a week or two (i have about 200 photos alone!) but I will post it on here, also we had a professional film crew travelling in our convoy through the desert and they will try to sell the documentry to a television station at some stage, the apparently have video footage of the mini airbourne! (and a few heated arguements between us and Mr Hadrami- our hapless local guide!).
more to come
Saturday, 6 January 2007
We Made It!!
We are finally in Banjul,
Nothing could have prepared us for how brutal the desert is on a car, but amazingly we all made it through, driving in a sandstorm, having to do at least 50mph or the car would sink down and get stuck, only able see about 50 meters infront of us, slamming into 3-5inch high rocks and tufts of grass, then going over hard sand the wind has blown into ripples that just shudder through the car over and over for miles. none of us had any idea that it would be that tough, and had we known we would never have believed the cars would have stood up to it. our tyres were nearly flat to give us more grip at one point we had to accelerate over a crest of a dune and the other side dropped away, the mini was fully airbourne about a foot high and then slammed nose first into the sand, smashing the numberplate and we thought the car was finished. When we finally made it out of the desert, the drive along the beach for 30 miles sounded fun, but it was just as bumpy as the desert. when we reached Senegal we thought it was all plain sailing, but in places the roads gave way to dirt tracks with unbelievable potholes in it, and at one point a pack of vulters were on the side of the road ripping a donkey carcass to bits. The road from the border to the ferry was in darkness, and just as punishing on the cars as the desert, once again we were just waiting for that one big hole that would tear off a wheel or something. got to the ferry port late, and missed the last boat. had to sleep the night in the cars with loads of local people milling about trying to sell things to you but overall polite, all we wanted to do was sleep.
the 6am boat turned up around 9am, and when we finally got into banjul it was the final test, the ferry was about a foot higher than the jetty, no joke it was a foot drop, and we couldn't even take a run up at it, as there were hundreds of passengers walking all round, we fell off the front and slammed on to the now pummelled sump guard and had to have about 10 people push and lift it off. Being a lot more touristy, there were a couple of Brits wandering round the docks, and while waiting for all the other cars, one guy leaned in an asked where we had come from, when we said london, he couldn't believe it. It turns out there are no flights available now until wednesday but that means we get to take part in the parade in town where all the cars are taken through the town, we are a little like local celebrities here as everyone knows what we are doing and they all say hello and want to thank us for helping the gambian foundation. anyway, off to the pool now for a cold cold cold beer and a swim :)
its been long, tiring, and difficult, but what an adventure.
Friday, 5 January 2007
Last days driving
Headed across Senegal with some form of escort hoping to cross the border tonight or latest tomorrow into Gambia. The others have booked a flight on Wed 12th but David and Pat are going to try their luck at standby to get an earlier flight. Looking forward to hearing how the Mini gets on in the auction.
Rest day in St Louis
Spent all day on the 4th in St Louis Senegal waiting for other cars to arrive but mostly waiting for a "customs" official to escort them across Senegal to the Gambia border. Another night camping in St Louis, hopefully will be on the road again on the 5th for the final 350 miles to The Gambia. Total group on the 4th is about 25 cars.
Thursday, 4 January 2007
03/01 Senegal
Arrived at the Senegal border and spent many hours negotiating the rate to cross the border using a French speaking rally contestant. The cars have suffered a lot over the past few days with sump guards hammered to the shape of the sump and much of the paint removed from the mini by the sand storms, obviously missed the final lacquer course.
Later message from David.
Made it safe to Zebra bar in Senegal near St Louis, shitty road like you would not beleive. All intact, cold beer
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