Camervroom

From Stephen:

Every year in Mexico race across the desert takes place called the Baja 1000. Almost every celebrity racing driver has competed over its 40 odd year history (inc. Steve McQueen)

Way back in the 1970’s they introduced class called Class11 for standard VW beetles. Each year the minimum time to qualify for a race finish gets lower and lower, meaning that numerous years have gone by without a Class 11 car every finishing!

In 2007 this black little beetle finished within the time, winning Class 11.

Here he is in the shorter Baja 250 race.

(Ferry from Timbuktu, Mali)

Ok. I confess. Desmond Tutu hasn’t got the slightest thing to do with this blog post. I just thought it was a wonderfully silly title. So there you go.

Cogs are turning, grinding noises are escaping from a Northamptonshire garage, plans are being hatched and things are generally coming along with a little more pomp than before.

After abandoning the middle route due we’ve decided to spice up our alternative one by driving through the desert for an extra day or so to Timbuktu.

I’m not quite sure when I first heard the word Timbuktu. Perhaps I was five. Six. Or maybe eight. But I was certainly no older than that. It’s a word that is etched into my childhood – a faraway place that was only ever mentioned by incredulous mothers, schoolteachers, the old and the mad.

And we’re going to drive there. I’ve heard there is a lazy river and a good lot of sand.

Needless to say I am very excited about this. Although my excitement might be dampened a little this lunchtime as I have to exchange a nice warming soup at the Healthy Bite (our regular dinnertime stop) for an appointment at the local doctors.

Instead of their soup I am going to have Hep A, B, tetanus, polio and all the others injected into my arm.

If you would like to watch me complaining like a spoilt three year-old, then I suggest you tune into my twitter feed a little later on.

More info on Lennon to come soon.

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Image credit: Erwin Bolwidt

         

Click here to download:

From_Cameroon_to_Cuba.zip (2370 KB)

Old friends and new adventures

As I am here tapping the keyboard Ben and Steve are assaulting Lennon with spanners and hammers in Daventry.

My point is that I’m not.

I’m stuck in King’s Cross watching the fireworks going BANG – WHIZ – CRASH! over the north London sky and listening to a neighbour’s dog go berserk.

Anyway. I’ve time for a blog.

A key component of the Africa Rally is raising money for charity. The Adventurists’ official charities are Send a Cow, Ape Action Africa and the Rainforest Foundation. And in addition to these three we are going to grab the opportunity to raise some more money for Hazel’s Footprints Trust.

Steve, Ben and I all knew Hazel well while at Durham University (I wrote an article about this recently). In the five years of its existence the trust that was set up in her memory has operated extensively in Africa – investing around £60,000 a year in education projects in Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and – of course – Cameroon, where £6,000 was granted to furnish a school with a new library in 2008.

Doing the Africa Rally gives us the chance to raise a little more money for them.

To help us do this we've got lots of ideas. But first of all, I’ve got in contact with Felipe, a Cuban friend from my years in Madrid and a quite brilliant artist. All the pictures that you see in the gallery at the top of this post are his.

I’m hoping that Felipe can give Camervroom a dash of effortless Cuban swagger. He’s an artist with a free, expressive style and a rare ability to inject vivid life into an image. The illustrations that he did for my interview with Eliades Ochoa of the Buena Vista Social Club in 2007 – for lots of different reasons - are still some of my favourite pieces of art.

I’ve asked Felipe to create an illustration of Lennon the beetle over the next few weeks. Something fun, lively and different. We’ve already decided (though God knows why) that we are going to paint Lennon up like a Mexican taxi and as a Cuban I think Felipe is the perfect person to capture the Latin attitude that we're looking for.

Once we have the illustration we’ll print it out for Christmas cards and everyone who has sponsored us will get one despatched to them from an African post box on Christmas morning.

I've no idea when they will arrive.

More on this in a bit. But for the moment, there is no better way to finish off this post with the Buena Vista Social Club and Eliades Ochoa's El Carretero (the road).

(Me and Ben in the pub with two pints of Bishop's Finger)

A tip. If you ever happen to be planning a road trip through West Africa, steer clear of reading the FCO advice for the following countries: Niger, Mauritania and Mali – at bedtime.

Both Ben and I have both made this error in the last few weeks with the net effect of around three hours’ lost sleep. Nevertheless, it got me thinking.

Just like the next person, I am not keen on running into danger. But to avoid danger at all cost would be a little dull.

In an entirely safe and sanitised world (let’s call this the New Labour World), you wouldn't be allowed to race cars around at all. There would be no diving, gliding, surfing, sailing, climbing, trekking, drinking or smoking. Instead, we’d all sit quietly in armchairs reading the Daily Mail.

In this smokeless, alcohol-free society everyone would live to the ripe age of 85 before dropping dead one Sunday morning with a pang of regret.

And that, ever since I’ve been able to make my own choices, is what I’ve been trying to avoid.

But to drive through the middle of the Sahara Desert is a little too much.

Two weeks ago, after filling out our visa application forms, we realised that of all the other teams that are completing in the rally this year, we were the only one that had opted to travel along the ‘central’ route (Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon).

Everyone else had decided to follow the better roads (or any roads at all) that skirted around the edge of the continent.

This left us in a bit of a fix, for the following reasons:

1. Lots of money had already been spent on visas

2. If we did the central route alone, that would mean going into the desert alone.

3. Ben’s passport is now filled up to capacity, so he can’t apply for any more visas.

4. While travelling through Algeria you have to take a guide – and there is no possible room for a guide in our car.

5. Time is tight (six weeks to launch) and African Embassies are notoriously slow at handing out tourist visas.

On Sunday Stephen finished his racing season (coming a rather ridiculously good second in the national Legends Championship) and yesterday we all finally managed to meet up to thrash some of this out.

Here are some decisions that were made:

1. We’re going to abandon the middle route for all above reasons (and particularly risk of death)

2. Instead we are going to go through Morocco into West Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and then Cameroon. If anyone is going that way, then feel free to drop us an email.

3. We’re going to paint the car green and white like a Mexican taxi

4. Our first destination on the route will be Madrid – which gives me an excellent opportunity to see all of my old Spanish friends.

5. And Ben has to get a new passport.

Not bad for 50 minutes in a dark bar huddled over some sausages and mash. All the same it is now clear that with car preparation, charity fundraising, injections and administration, the next few weeks are going to be even madder than the last few.

Oh well. Stick with me. I’m doing my best to write it all down.

As the great Homer Simpson once said: ‘No matter how good at something you are, there are always about a million people better with you’, and bearing this snippet of wisdom in mind I want to point out another Africa Rally team, Team Chocks Away.

Here is part of their biography, which I’ve just stolen from their site:

Team Chocks Away consist of two fine young men, David Aspinall Esq and Ben Stevenson Esq. David has a fine selection of canes and umbrellas, whilst Ben has a penchant for side burns and fine wines. They met at a moustache conference back in 2004, and soon became close friends.

They have always found modern motor carriages to be vulgar, and too fast. Their chariot of choice is a rather beautiful Royal Blue 1934 Austin Seven Special. The Austin Seven was the English Ford Model T of its day, and is full of character and charm. Unlike the modern equivalents it was built to last, and after 75 years is still going strong.

Throughout the dark winter months the pair will leave Englands rolling hills to brave the cold and the French hospitality, before entering sunny Spain. Once out of Europe the adventure begins.

From the Souks of Morocco to the dunes of the Sahara, Chocks away will travel through Western Africa encountering all manner of people and landscapes. They intend to explore Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Bukina Faso, Benin, Nigeria and finally Cameroon.

Yes. You read right. Team Chocks Away are going to (attempt to) drive to Cameroon in a 1934 Austin Seven Special. That, for any of you who don’t know, is the type of vehicle that you expect to find Mr. Toad of Toad Hall driving. And if not him, then perhaps Bertie Wooster.

The car is more than three quarters of a century old, it has a top speed of about 48 mph, when you change gear it sounds as if someone's just trodden on a box of cornflakes, it doesn’t have any doors and there isn’t enough room inside it for anything more than a couple of passengers. And a bottle of gin.

I’m not so much bothered at being completely outdone by these two, so much as in total awe. There are silly plans and there are very silly plans, but this – as far as I am aware – has just established a whole new category.

Will they get there? I’d like to think that they would, the idea of that car bouncing along an African road is enough to sustain me at even the lowest moments of a working day, but then there is another voice in my head which says:

No Peter. Of course they won’t. They’ll be lucky to get past Paris. They might not even make Dover.

Either way, I’ll add a video of them here with suitably squeaky music. I wish them all the best and hope that they sweep triumphantly into Cameroon in February.

I’m just not holding my breath.

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While sifting through the visas, we noticed that Ben Newman (on his passport photo) in 2009 was virtually indistinguishable from Ben Newman (on his passport photo) in 2007.

Both equally grumpy. Can you guess which is which?

After the documents have been signed, one of the first things to do with an old car is to give it a name.

Once a car has a name, it has a personality. For example, my old flatmate Andy had a mini called Christie, a friend in Staffordshire has a Peugeot named Frank and an old workmate has a Triumph named Gerald. Each of them with their own wonderfully memorable identity.

Perhaps one day an academic will undertake a proper sociological study into the British tendency to name their cars (as far as I’m aware this doesn’t happen half as much anywhere else), but that isn’t the point of this post and I’m beginning to ramble.

Our beetle has been christened Lennon, and he has been done so for the following reasons:

1. He is a beetle.

2. He will most likely die in December.

3. He was purchased on 9 October 2009, the 69^th anniversary of John Lennon’s birth.

Let those three reasons, good as they are, not mask the fact that Lennon has been so named because I am – and have been since the age of four – a pretty big John Lennon fan.

The music. The attitude. The philosophy. The art. The excess. The humour. The unpredictability. Yes. If by giving the beetle a name we are giving it a personality, then I think the name Lennon works rather well.

And while I don’t want to get at all political on here, writing this little post also gives me an excellent opportunity to add this extraordinarily good video:

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(In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message)

Enjoy.

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Image credit above: San Diego Shooter

Progress. Progress. There’s actually been some progress!

Excitingly:

• We now have a car.
• We have bought a new engine for said car.
• We have bought some new seats for said car (from Stoke on Trent)
• We have bought some new tyres for said car.
• We have filled out all visa applications and sent them off. (with lots of money)

In a little more detail:

Remember the old, doddery beetle that was featured further down the page? The one that looked like Herbie? The one that was utterly useless for anything more complicated than a trip to the shops? The one that couldn’t – in Steve’s words – ‘pull the skin off a rice pudding’?

Well we bought it. Here was the victory message:

“I've bought it.

But boys, if you thought driving a mini had some novelty. It’s nothing compared to this thing!“

The owner was after £950 and we eventually shook hands on £500 (he kept the roof rack).

The beetle is left hand drive and has been imported from Mexico. Here is how it was described on Gumtree:

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VINTAGE LEFT HAND DRIVE / LHD VW BEETLE.

Beautiful Classic VW Beetle 1200cc, 1984, low miles (KMS) & only 3 previous owners from new, one lady since 2 years old who bought it in 1986.

I will get the bad points out the way. I am selling this WITHOUT MOT and Road Tax. I recently had an MOT done and the car needs some attention. Nothing major, but as I am relocating, it's not worth the time and expense to get the car back on the road. I have had a few of the smaller issues looked at already (new front wheel and a service and tune up).

Let’s be clear, I am GUTTED about having to sell this car, I LOVE it and would love to keep this car forever. I've had so much fun with it and it gives so much pleasure to other people! However reality dictates that I don't have the money to take care of it and give it the TLC it deserves. Exporting it is also going to be expensive apparantly!

Originally made in Mexico for Germany it was bought for export by the 1st UK owner from the the main VW Beetle dealer who exported it immediately to UK, and owned for 2 years (so there's not a long list of previous invisible owners abroad!) it still has the original LHD front lights in the boot...and original VW tool kit in VW wallet.

Being 24 years old it has had a respray in its original colour of white, with the exception of a subtle pearl effect (all glass out and new fixed window rubbers all round and wing moulding rubbers), also loads of lovely chrome too and new running boards.

For its age this car is in great condition inside & out, really good body with good floors/heater channels etc and mechanically sound too, I have driven it to Bath a couple of times and it sails down the motorway at 120km! It's not quiet though mind you. Fantastic economy though.

Comes with original VAG pack service book, handbook, 2 keys (1 key fits all + spare) original German Brief (log book) with all its option codes! Be part of history by owning a Beetle (not many affordable classic cars you can say that about)

Owning & driving a bug just brings a smile to your face, its more fulfilling than a modern car with mod-cons, because you just feel one-to-one with it, it recieves many an admiring stare and lots of smiles and makes others happy believe it or not, just great!

If looked after, it can be a fantastic touring holiday home car, no overheating in summer, no antifreeze for winter, reliable & cheap to maintain & run. Left hand drive, so ideal for continent/holiday home.

EXTRAS INCLUDE the flat four type retro roof rack, (wood slats, would cost 200/250 new), and also the canvas type weatherproof cargo rack storage system for massive storage which is unused and boxed worth 60 pounds!

This car is vintage and as such comes with it's quirks and ideally needs to go to someone who is going to look after her and has the time to give it the TLC she deserves! She does need to be driven fairly regularly.

PS The numbers are stick on's and can be removed should you not want people and kids shouting "look, there goes Herbie!". :)

Fast Fact File

Make: Volkswagen

Model: Beetle 1200

Year: 1984

Colour: Pearl White

Transmission: Manual

LHD

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In the quietest moments of Saturday night, the beetle was pushed into an enormous racing trailer and spirited away to the deepest depths of darkest Northamptonshire (Daventry).

It’ll stay there for a few ‘modifications’ over the next few months.

More to follow.

Well this is strange.

This year a team from California named “Team Rubik Crew” completed the Mongol Rally.

There were two of them: an-Apple-Mac-tapping-West-Coast-kid named Joe Sabia and Tim Navis, an arty designery type with a gift for words and a face full of designer stubble. (Well, that’s what I can make out from their website anyway.)

Team Rubik Crew bought a Fiat Seicento and painted it like a Rubik’s cube (as you do). Then they drove all the way through Europe, down as far as Azerbaijan, crossed over into Kazakhstan and carried on into Mongolia.

Along the way they stopped in various town squares, jumped onto the roof of their Seicento, drumming up a crowd before solving the Rubik’s cube to general delight. You can see a video of them doing it here.

It all seems very odd. Then again, America is a “can do” nation.

Two things to note here. Firstly, in the run up to their trip they were interviewed as part of a feature on Fox News. Twenty four seconds into the report our red mini from 2006 (called Mabel), flashes onto the screen, making me both proud that my old car has been featured on a news station that has so often made me angry, and sad that we ended up making such an utter mess of her over the subsequent four weeks.

You can see the video of the report by visiting their website and clicking on the 'We're on Fox News' video.

Last point of interest is this. While travelling through Kazakhstan, Team Rubik Crew filmed various different people each singing, rapping, mouthing, repeating or bellowing a line from Tupac’s The Way It Is single. When brought home, cobbled together, thrown over a backing track and edited into one nice video, the results really are very impressive.

If you're going to watch one video today, then make it this one. Honestly. Watch it.

Well, if I was planning a night out in the next few weeks (or months), then I am going to have to reconsider.

This is the conversation that I'm going to have fifty times:

- "Hello Peter. A quick drink after work?"

- "Sorry. I've just spent all of my money on a Nigerien visa. I'll be at home eating soup."

(Total cost for visas and for people to scurrying along to the embassies on our behalf, £474)

In the words of Withnail. "Balls."