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Banjul or Bust |
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About the Team |
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Nic and Gary decided in their great wisdom to travel from Hyde Park, London to Banjul in Gambia. We left on Dec 26th 2008 at 10.30 am in an ambulance and arrived on 10th January 2009. We travelled from Dover to Calais, through France and Spain. We met the rally in Southern Spain before catching the ferry to Africa. We spent New Years Eve in a motorway service station in Tangers before we travel through Mauritania, Senegal and finally The Gambia. |
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We donated our ambulance to the Gambian Government on our arrival and are raising money for Bovingdon primary school and the Georgetown trust and to neonatal unit in Luton and Dunstable hospital. We used the local press, The Hemel Hempstead Gazette and Watford Observer to raise our profile. We contacted the local radio and television stations. Bovingdon Primary School incorporated our trip into their Geography lessons
Nic & Gary met in Year 2000 and have worked together since then. Gary is a freelance chef (so bring some good food for Gary to cook) and Nic is a freelance catering manager. Nic has two children with Tania, his wife and another due in November! Gary, has two cats with his long term partner Caroline. January is a generally a quiet time in the catering industry, so it is the perfect time to travel to Gambia. We are really looking forward to the adventure, as well as raising money for our chosen charities. |
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On the 26th December we left Hyde Park at 10.30am in the Plymouth – Dakar rally. We got the 2pm ferry from Dover and were on our way. Please have a look at our daily Field report of the trip. We will use our website to outline what we have achieved and raise as much money as possible. As we drove the 1480 miles to Sotogrande in Spain our gear box started to rattle and finally found it difficult to go up hills. On inspection (Gary took the gear lever, prop shaft, gear box and clutch apart) we found the fly wheel had disintegrated. There were group conversations it could be rebuilt. After 3 days, a lot of pain, stress and money (£761 on fly wheel alone) we finally got going, 36 hours behind the rest of our team. We met up with all the teams a further 1400 miles to Daklah in the Western Sahara. On Saturday 10th January we made it 4,500 miles to Gambia. On Monday 12th January, the most amazing experience of our lives occurred as we gave over 600 presents to the school children of Georgetown. We will be presenting our video to Bovingdon Primary school next half term. We have got all the latest photographs on our photo page. For those that are interested, Nic is writing up our diary in the hope of publishing it. |
