Welcome to our website and our big adventure!

We've started! Visit the Diary Page for details.

We hope you will use this website to follow us on our travels. Click here to join our mailing list and be kept informed of updates. If you are also interested in the people of Africa, will you consider supporting Medecins Sans Frontieres by clicking on this link - www.uk.msf.org - with their website, reading about their current projects and offering a donation.

Why you may ask are we leaving the comfort and security of home to travel an uncertain road in Africa?

The answer lies partly in our past. We were both, coincidentally, born in and spent our early childhoods in Africa. Steve, in the currently named Democratic Republic of Congo and Michele in Ghana. It has always been our intention to return to understand something of this vast continent. We have always enjoyed travelling but been frustrated by the restrictions imposed by fitting it into 'annual leave'. For example, last year we toured New Zealand by motorbike in three weeks but would have liked six!

Now seems as good a time as any and fits in well with family and work commitments.

Being dragged along to the LRO show in September by Rhona and Richard, our daughter and her fiancé, proved the catalyst we needed (and we decided that a Land Rover Defender 110 would be our vehicle).

Our son Andrew and his partner Stephanie have encouraged us from afar, as they are on their own travels around the world.

We intend to set off in January 2005.

We have each managed to arrange a career break of a year. It will be interesting to see how we will feel stepping back into our current lives a year later!

We are looking forward to learning or re-establishing skills needed to meet the challenges of the road. We intend to drive our land rover from the UK, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, into Africa. The initial destination being Ghana. We will then take stock, examining the options for a route further south.

The planning of such a project is being greatly helped by information from the websites of current overlanders. ( see www.africa-overland.net)

Learning survival skills.

On a freezing cold weekend in November, we spent two days in a wood in Staffordshire with instructors from www.survivalschool.co.uk. Arriving late we found ourselves under a "basher", a sort of mini tarpaulin with lots of loops, strung between trees by the camp fire with some vegetable stew and roasted pigeon breast that the other guys on the course had kindly kept for us. Sub zero temperatures and rain did nothing to deter the enthusiasm of the group and the instructors managed to teach us a huge amount in a very carefully structured programme.

The two pictures are of Steve building our "shelter" and the cooking fire!

By the end of the course we were exhausted but much more confident backwoods persons! Living in a rooftop tent on the Wanderer will be a picnic by comparison!