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Adventures: Accidental & Intentional

While travelling, things inevitably go wrong.

Usually, these are the stories to be told on repeat - after the panic subsides.

They’re also moments for shifting your perspective and gaining a greater sense of insight. For forging a greater sense of familiarity with place, as well as with who you are under pressure.

These stories are an argument for letting more Type Two fun into your life, and becoming richer for it.

Taking a 2WD From Ebay to Africa: The Europe Leg

Way back at the end of 2010, a friend and I bought a car off eBay for under £250 with the intention of driving it from the UK, through West Africa.

Our initial goal was to make it to Timbuktu in Mali. If we could get the car to last the distance.

As the car was an eBay purchase, we knew nothing of its service history, or what it might actually be capable of. In all likelihood, we wouldn’t even make it as far as Morocco - or so we thought.

We fully expected the car to break down, and it did - numerous times.

 
 

We were prepared to abandon the car if we needed to, which is probably the only reason we didn’t need to.

Our plan b in case we couldn’t get the car running again after a break down was to hitch-hike out, so we packed sparingly, in case we needed to carry everything we owned, and leave the car behind.

In all, our journey took place over four months, starting on Christmas Eve 2010 in Exeter and finishing just before April in 2011 (around 16 April that year).

This is everything that happened in between.

THE FIRST LEG : UK TO FRANCE

IN THIS EPISODE:

We had just picked up our eBay purchase in Exeter, and driven it via London, to Calais - using the EuroTunnel.

Once we arrived in France, we headed for our first overnight in Tours, discovering that the car’s handbreak wasn’t working along the way. Not only that, but the car didn’t have a radio, and so we resigned ourselves to settling for an ipod and a pair of portable speakers to keep us entertained for the journey.

From Tours, we headed on to San Sebastian in Spain, via Bordeaux.

This first part of the journey took place with a fair bit of haste, as we were trying to get to Tarifa in Southern Spain by the 28th December. We would be meeting more people there, who would also be driving into West Africa with cars that cost less than £500.

The idea was that we would all drive together to Bamako, the capital of Mali, and from there on to Timbuktu.

The trip was designed to replicate the Paris to Dakar supercar rally, but instead of racing fancy cars to get there first, the challenge was merely to make it to the finish line, given our car’s price tags would place any such goals against reasonable odds.

We were also racing against the closure of the Mauritanian embassy in Rabat, Morocco, ahead of New Year’s Eve. We needed to apply for our Mauritanian visas there, in order to continue our journey beyond Western Sahara, and time was against us. As a result, our passage through Western Europe needed to take place before the embassy closed for New Year’s Eve.

The above clip re-tells the part of our journey from the UK to San Sebastian in Spain, before the real fun of arriving in Africa began.

type two fun, overlandingClare DoolanFrance, UK, SpainComment