Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Mac MacKenney on Leading Expeditions and Breaking Records

Transcript

Mac MacKenney on Leading Expeditions and Breaking Records · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: your host, Scott Brady and for today's guest, we've got
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mac McKenny. Mack McKenny is one of the most notable
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: overlanding professionals in the world. So Mack has literally made
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a living, He's made a career out of traveling overland.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: So he has led some of the most significant overland
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: expeditions to date, many of them also for television. So
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Mack has worked with a list actors like Adrian Brody,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Tom Hardy and others on several expeditions, including ones to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the Pole of Cold in Russia. He also held the
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: record for the fastest time from London to Cape Town overland,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and he has done things around electric vehicles, but also
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: just a master planner, a master navigator, prioritizer of equipment,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: so there is a lot that come into this conversation.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: We also talk about his time with the Royal Air Force.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: We talk about his career shift from being in the
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: military and some personal tragedies that happened along the way.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot to learn from Mac, and I
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: did in the conversation with him. I really enjoyed spending
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: time with him at his family farm in the south
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: of England. So please enjoyed my conversation with Mac McKenny
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and a special thanks to Rocky Talkies for their support
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of this week's podcast. Rocky Talkies are backhuntry radios designed
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: by a small team in Denver. The radios are extremely rugged,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: easy to use and compact, weighing in just under eight ounces.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: They have a range of one to five miles in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the mountains and up to twenty five miles line of sight.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: The batteries will last from three to five days and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you can recharge them easily via USBC right in the vehicle.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Our team uses Rocky Talkies and we also use them
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: recently at the Overland Expo. The next Overland Expo, stop
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: into our booth and say hello and check out the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: radius for yourself. And as a listener of the Overland
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: DURL podcast, you can get ten percent off of pair
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: by going to Rockytalkie dot com forward slash Overland Journal.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks again, Rocky Talking So Mac, thank you so much
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: for being on the podcast, and thank you for hosting
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: me at your beautiful home.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, where are we at approximately in the UK?
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: We are in East seven, so you are about one
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty miles south west of London, down on
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: the sort of the narrowing pointy bit of England in
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: the bottom left hand corner of the UK.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I had it just a beautiful drive today. I was
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: driving the Grenadier that we're going to take across Africa
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and part of the goal with this trip was to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: get miles on it, to take it out to Millbrook
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and get some miles on it and then take a
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: longer drive like I did this morning, just to make
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: sure everything's functioning properly. And what a beautiful day to
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: be in an adventure vehicle in the UK.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: So, Gorgy, you've bought the best weather with you. I
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: tell you, it's not normally like this.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: It's yeah, it's normally wet and miserable, but today doesn't
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: get much better.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, thank you.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Bringing it with a little bit of Arizona with this,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I'll drink to that.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And we're actually we're having a beautiful sider right here.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: This is a local sider, is.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: It, yeap just over the border in Somerset. So that's
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: made you know, no more than ten mile.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Away, so incredible. Well, one of the things that I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: don't know about you, and i'd love to learn more,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: is where you grew up, what your experience was as
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: a young person that drove you into this passion for
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the outdoors.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: I'm a London lad by birth, only spent six months
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: with my life there. Luckily, I'm more of a country
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: lad at heart. My dad was a traffic cop in
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: the Metropolitan Police, so he used to go out on
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: the motorbikes escorting Margaret Thatcher and the Queen and all
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: the rest of it through London. Both my parents were
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: brought up down here. They were evacuated down here during
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: the war as young children, so I've always had family
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: here and then my dad, when he got promoted a sergeant,
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: had fortunate managed to buy a second house, so that
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: meant that we spent even more time down here. So
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: this has always been kind of my my real home
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: in terms of where I feel most comfortable. So as
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: a young lad, from the age of about seven eight
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: up until when I joined the military, we would be
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: exploring all of the fields around here, so always out
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: you know, building camps and playing soldiers, and that was
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: kind of where I felt most comfortable, you know, out
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: in the middle of nowhere. My dad hadn't troubled much.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: He'd been posted to Bermuda. I think he was there
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: for about two years. But I guess sort of genetically,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: the sort of the adventurous DNA travel bug within me
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: has come from my mom's side. So she was a
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: stewardess on the original Queen Mary, which I think is
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: more is it it is Solia, Yeah, somewhere around that way.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: Is it a floating hotel or something? Now, So she
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: did a couple of laps of the world with that one,
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: and then some other Cunard ships. Yeah, once you start
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: hearing stories of New Zealand, Australia, the Panama Canal and
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: all the rest of it, you know. But I think
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: one of the key factors, one of the sort of
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: the real defining moments of my life. I was in
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: middle school, so what will that be ten And a
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: friend of one of the teachers was a Canadian. And
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: this Canadian was on holiday to see their friend, and
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: obviously their request was can you come and give a
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: talk to the school kids about where you live in Canada?
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: And they must have lived somewhere slap bang in the middle,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: because there was you know, one hundred and fifty little
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: kids sitting on the floor, and this person said, most
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: of the people in my village have never seen the sea.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Of course you've seen the sea. It's you know, in
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: the UK.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: And I think you're never more than seventy mile away
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: from the sea, even the most remote part in the middle,
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: which is, you know, a couple of hours drive. But
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: of course in the middle of Canada, you're talking thousands
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: of miles in every direction to go to the And
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: so I just sat there and was baffled by that,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: And clearly it then dawned on me that the rest
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: of the world isn't like where I was brought up
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: in Surrey. There are different places, different people, And I
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: think that just stuck with me and I thought, Craikie,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: I want to go and see these places where you
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: are so far from the coast, or you're so high
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: up a mountain, nor so deep into a desert or jungle.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of where it all started, that
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: sort of fascination with the rest of the world.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And is that part of what was the motivation to
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: join the military.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I'd always wanted to be a pilot. My father, he
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: too had wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: but he never made the grade, so he didn't get
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: the qualifications at school, so he just did his National service.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: He was a signals officer, so he bit like you
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: now with your headphones on and all the kids. He
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: was there listening to the Russians and the Morse Code.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: But I wanted to be a pilot, so I from
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: the age of six, so I joined the Air Cadets,
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: and that was my one and only aim in life.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: I didn't think about adventure or climbing mountains or driving vehicles.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: It was I was going to be a fighter pilot,
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: and that was my one and only focus in life.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: And that was throughout my entire schooling. So apart from
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: messing around here and messing around playing soldiers in the
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Air Cadets, it was flying, flying, flying, and that's all
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: I ever wanted to do.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: How did that experience go for you? In the military.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: The path of my life didn't go quite as I
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: had hoped, So I was awarded a flying scholarship when
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: I was sixteen. So basically, you do the medical and
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: the aptitude tests. You don't have to do the leadership
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: test because they don't really expect too much out of
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: you as a fifteen sixteen year old, but you do
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: all the other tests, and if you are of pilot
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: material and you have to sit one interview, they will
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: basically pay almost to get your private pilot's license.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And I was awarded one of them. They only give
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: out like ten a year or so.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Wow, So I out of ten fifty thousand cadets or
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: whatever it was, there's a lot of cadets, I was
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: one of the very lucky for you to get awarded
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: this flying scholarship. I then get a letter, No, it
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: wasn't even a letter, it was a phone call one morning,
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: not long after having done this aptitude and medical test,
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: saying you need to get into hospital right now, straight
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: drop everything, get straight into London immediately. You've got suspected
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: heart disease as a sixteen year old. So in I
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: go into London. A week of all sorts of tubes
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: and tests and treadmills and oxygen and things being poked
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: up insiam me and operations, they couldn't find any heart disease.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: But they found in a regularity, and that's what had
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: been picked up on this ECG trace, This heart test,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: but the underlying result was you will never fly in
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: any capacity, military or civilian, and you will never join
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: the Royal Air Force and any capacity.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: My world just folded because there was never a plan B.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: So for ten years all it ever focused on and
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: before it even really got to the proper start line.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: But also, having been awarded a flying scholarship, you know
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: we're going to give it to you on one hand,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: and then we're going to immediately take it away from you.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: So from elation to utter despair within probably twenty four hours.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: You know, it was very, very difficult.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I don't really remember too much of it, but my
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: mum said, I just kind of locked myself away for
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: a week. My Dad's never going to hear this, so
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: I don't mind saying it. But unfortunately, I think there
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: was quite a lot of jealousy from him because he
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: wanted to be a pilot and didn't make the grade.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: So throughout my entire childhood his attitude was, well, if
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: I didn't make it, you don't understand a chance, so
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: forget it. You're not good enough, You're not good as me.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: So I think there was a certain amount of sort
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: of glee from him that hah, told you so, because
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: I guess he didn't want to see me do the
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: life that he wanted to lead. I didn't get the
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: support from my parents, my mum. I think she was
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: just trying to be a bit more realistic and level headed.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: You know, how many people who apply for fighter pilot
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: make it. The percentage is tiny, so the odds are
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: you're not going to make it, So better have a
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: bit more of a realistic head on you.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: She sent me off to some supermarket to do a
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: sort of a managerial course, and I thought, you know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: really stucking beans on shelves, you don't even know who
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: I am as a child.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: That's never going to fulfill for my needs. But it was.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: It was a school teacher. It was my old geography teacher.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: That was the one that basically kept me on the
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: straighten out and I owe him so long.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: I'm still in touch with him.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Oh that's wonderful, and yeah, yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Because he said look, because I literally thought I was
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: going to pack a rucksack and run and he said no,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: He said, you got to get your O levels, which
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: is the first proper grade that we have to do
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: here in the UK. It's not going to retire for
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: two years to stay at school and do a levels.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Don't run, you know, just focus on your education and
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: so yeah, so I basically chose subjects with him as
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: the teacher because he was such a good bloke and
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: he kind of kept me on the straight ened arrow.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: And thank god he did, because, as I will explain later,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: things changed and without those qualifications, I would have been screwed.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I would have thrown away an opportunity. So I owe
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: him a lot.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: We need those people in our life absolutely. That will
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: remind us that there's something to fight for. Yeah, yeah,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: hopefully to keep us on that street.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very much.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: So I certainly am grateful for the Air Force. For
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: me was I was just a firefighter in the military,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I felt like I was a ship without
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a rudder. Yeah, and it really made a difference for me.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: For me, for sure. So what happens next to you, Well,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: we for a while.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I did.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: I did my O levels and we got enough grades
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: to get a good job. I just didn't know what
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: the heck I was going to do in my life.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: So my dad retired from the police, as you did
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: in those days. At the age of forty six, with
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: a four penchant moved from the London area down to
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: the West Country where we are now. And I thought, okay,
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: if I can't fly, I'll fix aircraft, you know, in fact,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: tell a lie. I thought, if I can't fly, I'll travel.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: So I actually applied to Shell to be a deck
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: officer on tankers. I didn't know the front end of
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: a boat to the back end of the bar. I
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: didn't have a clue, not a clue. But I thought,
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: if I can't fly, because I'd heard about my mum
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: traveling the world, I thought, I'll just travel, get away,
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I'll escape from where I am. Anyway, I failed the
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: ice sight test, so Tornado fighter six hundred mile an hour,
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: one hundred feet off the ground, perfect eyesight, sitting on
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: a big boat doing two miles an hour, and my
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: eyesight wasn't good enough anyway, So that one went out
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: the window. So then I thought, okay, well I'll apply
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: to the Army because they've got helicopters. I can't fly
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: them because the Air Force has got final say, so
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: I'll I've become a helicopter technician. Kept failing the medical
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: I thought, well they're not going to know about what
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: I did in the Air Force, but they did because
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: the cards kind of followed me. So I kept failing
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Army medicals and I got really frustrated.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: So I said to the careers officer.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: I said, look, had I come to you never having
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: had a heart test like I was going aircrew, you
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: wouldn't test my heart anyway. There could be one hundred
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: other guys like me with the same irregularity. It's not
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: causing any problems. I've done aerobatics, I can run a marathon.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: You know clearly it's not physically affecting me. But you've
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: now labeled me as having a heart problem. And he said, oh,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: there's nothing I can do. You know anyway, you obviously
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: thought about it. And about a week later, having had
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: failed three Army medicals, I get a phone call say, Mac,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: what are you doing. I said, oh, nothing much. He said,
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: get up to Taunton. It's about twenty miles north of
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: where we are, So I drove up there. He gave
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: me a brown envelope and a return to get to Plymouth,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: and there's a naval base at Plymouth. So off I
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: go on the train, knock on a door, found this
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: bloke with a nut guy's name on it, handed the
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: brown envelope over to him. He opened it, took a
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: piece of paper out, signed it, handed it back. Congratulationship
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: fit to join the Army as a naval doctor and
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: falsified my medical papers to.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Get me in.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: Oh wow.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: And to this day I've not been able to track
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: down the careers officer or the naval doctor because Mike, God,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: do I owe them a pint or two? And that's
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: how I got in?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Wow, Yeah, So I joined the Army and as a
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: helicopter tech. Different trades you have to sign on for
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: different lengths of service. So if you're a basic infantry
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: soldier you could probably just do three years. If you're
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: a technician, they're going to spend two years training you,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: so they don't want you to leave after another year,
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: so you have to sign on for a minimum of six.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: So with the helicopters, as with probably most aircraft, if
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: you do anything to it, you've got to take it
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: for a test flight. You know, change a rodorblade, change
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: an engine, change a smartplug, whatever it is, you take
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: it for a test flight.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: And I would have gou ye'll do it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I'll volunteer for that test flight, and I was forever
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: up there with my little diagnostics kit next to the pilot,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: checking that the aircraft wasn't going to fall out the sky.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: And they said, you're a bit keen, aren't you. You
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: know your techies like to keep your feet on the ground.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: I said, oh god, no, I'd just going to be flying.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: They said, well, why didn't you apply for aircrew? Clearly
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: you're clever enough. If you can fix, you can fly.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Them.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Gave them the whole medical story of all failing, all
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: these medicals and this heart problem, and they said, oh no,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: we'll help you out. So two of our pilots in
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: our very small unit, we were part of a rapid
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: deployment unit. We weren't special forces, but we were kind
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: of rapid forces. So we were always on standby to
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: go to the extreme north and Norway where Russia and
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Norway have one hundred and fifty mile long border, or
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: the very extreme of Turkey where they border Georgia. So
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: what was part of the Soviet Union, so we would
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: be part of this multinational NATO force. So we were
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: working alongside the Americans with their Hueys, the arif or
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: with their humor helicopters, So all of these NATO helicopter
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: units were very much mixed in, so if any the
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Russians did attack, you couldn't single out who you wanted
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: to hit.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: You would get.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: Casualties from all sides. So basically we were like cannon fodder.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: But basically it was a brilliant unit. Arctic warfare training,
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: desert training and all the rest of it.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Two of our pilots were doctors. We only had twelve pilots,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: and two of them were doctors.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: And they said, right, we'll send you back to the
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: regimental doct got sent back to a test, nothing wrong
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: with your heart. Got sent all the way through the
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: system back to the same arif doctor had failed me
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: as a cadet, did the same test and went, nothing
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: wrong with your heart, you're fit to join the Air Force.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: I went, oh my god, seriously, I've been in about
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: oh how long have I been in? Eighteen months? At
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: that point I'd just done my basic training. Of course
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: i'd signed off for six years. The six year point
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: would have meant I was twenty five before I could leave.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: You have to be in pilot training the Air Force
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: twenty by the time you're twenty four. Otherwise you're too old.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: So it was a two and a half year battle
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: to get out the Army. Basically I always had to
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: go on strike to get out.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Anyway. I got pushed higher and high and higher up
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: the chain.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Ended up in front this brigadier and he said, if
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: you if you promise me, you'll go down the careers office,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the RIF careers office.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: The day I let you out, I will let you out.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And he did.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: And I was true to my work, and I went
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: and signed up to the Air Force and started officer
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: training about a year later.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So you did get to fly after all?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I started fast jet training.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: What a story.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: So it was a long It was a long battle.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: It wasn't like, oh I saw top gun, I'm going
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: to be a pilot. It was quite a long winded
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: battle to get there, which unfortunately then makes the later
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: part of the story more heartbreaking because it was such
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: a battle to get to that point.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you make it into the Air Force. Yeah,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: what happens next?
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: I excelled as an officer and was made the senior
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: cadet of all one hundred and fifty that went through training.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: I then did my first pilot training course on the
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: little Chipmunk, which is a piston engined aircraft, fully aerobatic
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: six G wonderful little aircraft to fly. If I've just
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: got my daughter a flight in one only about a
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: week ago, there's one up at the local airfield here,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: and I know the pilot, so I got her a
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: flight in an aircraft that i'd actually phone when I
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: was in the military. Then I went on to the
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: second aircraft. It's called the Ticano, so it's turboprop. I
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: was holding my own and i'd been near mark for Jaguars,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: which is single seat, so I was good enough to
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: not need a navigator. And then I came home one
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: weekend and it's about two hundred and fifty mile away,
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: good five hour drive.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: There's a long old haul. UK roads aren't brilliant. It
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: takes a long time.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: And I came home one weekend and a good friend
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: of mine, her mum worked in the bank, and I
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: just happened to go into the bank to get some
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: money and the mum drags me to one sign says
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: I've got to talk to you.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: I've got to talk to you, my daughter.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: I won't say who it is, But my daughter has
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: just been raped and we're really worried about her. She's
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: a nurse. We're really concerned she's going to do something stupid.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Can you come and see her? So I did, and
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: I went to see this girl. And then I don't
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: know how it really happened, but I ended up finding
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: myself every weekend driving from Lincolnshire to Devon to basically
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: sit with this girl to stop her killing herself. And
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: the mum was kind of feed I don't know, now
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: that I'm a parent, you'd kind of you would say
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: anything to anybody if to keep your child alive. You know,
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: you don't care what you do, and I'm sure I
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: would do the same, But I think the mum was
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: feeding me a bit of a line, saying things like
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: the doctors and the psychiatrists are set telling us you're
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: the only one keeping her alive.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: If it wasn't for you, she would have killed herself
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: by now.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: So you get a lot of pressure put on you
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: every weekend, I was driving back and forth and back
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: and forth. Now, when you're trying to be a fast
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: jet pilot, the last thing you need at the weekends
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: is to be doing a ten hour round trip, probably
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: more stuck in traffic, sitting with someone day and night
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: to try and make sure they don't kill themselves, and
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: all the mental pressure associated with it. You're supposed to
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: de stress, you know, you've had a hard week for
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: fast jet training. You've just got to decompress and chill
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: out and you know, take time for the next week. Yeah,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: and I wasn't doing that. And this is before red
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: bull had been invented. And I remember, you know, downing
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: two liters of full fat coke just to keep me
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: awake to make the journey home. I got back late
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: one Sunday night, looked on the roster. First thing Monday morning,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: eight o'clock mac solo flight one hour.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Off you go.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: And these are multimillion pound aircraft, you know, in the
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: high performance and a lot of the time you're flying
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: very low or very high, you know, full ejectacyat and
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: all the rest of it. And so if off I went,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: and I wasn't high thirteen fifteen thousand feet and I
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: was doing aerobatics and you're pulling six Now, we didn't
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: have G suits in these aircraft. It's only when you
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: move on to the hawk get a G suit and.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So you've got to just bear it down.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you've got to do what's called the antig
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: straining maneuver, which, without sounding too crude, is like having
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: the world's worst constipation.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And you've got to stress every.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Muscle in your body to keep the blood pressure in
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: your head as high as you can by tensing.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm doing that.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: I just didn't have the strength to do it, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: I just I'm absolutely knackered, and something just snapped and
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: I had this horrible I want to get out of
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: this plane right here, right now now. If I'd been
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: in a car, I would have thrown it over to
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: the side of the verge. I would have swung the
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: door open, and I'd have been collapsed on the floor, hyperventilating.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I had a massive panic attack.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: But I'm up there on my own on a clear
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: blue the day like this, and it's hot. You've got
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: the panopy on you, you've got a full flying suit
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: which is kind of fire resistant, and you've got the gloves,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: and you've.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Got the oxygen mask, and you've got the visor down,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: so you've got a little bit of air just around where.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Your neck is and you can pull your flying it
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: up or roll your glove down and you get a
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: little bit of air and there's tiny events, but it's
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: a really claustrophobic environment. It's like being in a greenhouse.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: And that just exasperated the situation and you're up there
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: on your own.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: I was now twenty five, and I'd wanted to be
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: a pilot since I was six, and I had that
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: whole battle of the flying scholarship, the Army getting out,
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: the Army getting in the Air Force. So the last
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: thing I was going to do was put out any
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: form of emergency call over the radio to say I
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: need a land now, because they'd have kicked me out,
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: or at least I assume they would kick me out,
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: So I kept quiet. So for fifty minutes I had
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: to try and keep this thing in the air, and
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: I was talking to myself, then calm down, just breathe, relax,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: calmed down, calm down. But of course it's got a
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: black box in it, so they could hear, or they
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: would have if there'd been anything happened to the aircraft,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: they would have been able to hear what I was
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: saying to myself, and they could tell that there's nothing
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: wrong with the aircraft. There were no system failures, the
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: wings hadn't fallen off, the weather wasn't bad. I was
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: getting to the point thinking I'm going to literally pass
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: out with fear.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I was getting into such a state.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: So there were two reactions that were two thoughts in
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: my head. This thing, if I pass out, my last
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: conscious moment before I black out through fear is to
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: reach down and pull the ejectacy and punch out. But
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I thought, well, I can't do that because this plane
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: is going to hit a school, or it's going to
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: hit a hospital. It's going to lap and I'm going
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: to come down on a chute perfectly okay, but I'm
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: going to kill people. You know, the odds of it
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: landing in a field probably quite good. But at the time,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: I was thinking, this is going to hit and kill people,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: and I can't do that. And I couldn't face the consequences.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: It will be all over the news. It would be
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: court martial, it would be you know, I wouldn't be
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: able to live with the consequences of having done that.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: So I thought, if I black out, I've got to
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: go down with it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: But I was only twenty five.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: I don't want to die it, so there was no
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: way out, and so that just built me into more
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: and more of a panic. Anyway, somehow, I don't know
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: to this day how I managed to keep that aircraft
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: in the air and keep control of it, because I
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: was just a complete mess. You remember the scene at
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the right of the beginning of Top Gun, but the
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: original when his mate's coming into land and he's sweating
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: and he's looking at the picture of his wife and
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: his kid, and Tom Cruise flies alongside and he's just.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: All over the shop.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I was kind of like that without any help
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: and couldn't talk to anybody.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: It was bloody awful.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Anyway, I came into land first time, I didn't put
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: my undercarriage down.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Of course, flares went.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Up and I've got a big rollicking over the radio
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: and I managed to land it.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: The second time. I never told a soul.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: I did go flying solo a few more times, but
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: that was all low level where that things were happening.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: But eventually there was a.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Day when the weather was bad, low cloud from about
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: two thousand to fifteen thousand feet, and the instructor said, right,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: go up through the cloud, do some arabatics and come
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: back down again. I'd had a panic on a clear
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: blue sky. Yeah, sure, And I just looked at him
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: and I said, I can't, I can't do it. I
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: had to put my hand up and then my world
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: fell apart.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: The Air Force are brilliant though, because at that point,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: because I'd excelled as an officer and I'd done so
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: well as a pilot, they sent me off to see
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: a doctor. I ended up in a hospital and to
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: this day, I don't know if I was there for
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: three weeks or three months.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Sure, But the problem is I felt.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Like I had a problem then because I was in
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: like a psychiatric ward. Yeah, and that made me feel worse.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: Now I do have a problem. But then they sent
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: me flying at Farmborough, which is on the west side
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: of London, with an American colonel. He was a doctor.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: He was an F sixteen instructor, Colonel McCarthy. I would
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: love to meet him again. What a cool dude he was.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: And we flew a Hunter, which is an old nineteen
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: sixty seventies fighter, but it was a two seat training
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: version and they would say it would put me through
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: everything that I could possibly ever experience as a fully
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: qualified pilot, high level, low level, super hot, super cold.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: They were in the centrifuge, the one that Roger Moore
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: had to destroy with his watch. They still had that.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: It's a nineteen fifty centrifuge nine G. Sitting there, they
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: were using me to test the typhoon antig suit. So
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: the normal G suit kind of presses your abdomen and
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: squeezes your legs a bit. This is full inflatable socks,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: full inflatable legs right up to here. And then someone
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: decided the best way to compress a muscle is not
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: just from the outside, but from the inside and the outside.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: So as you're pulling G, high pressure air is being
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: forced into your lungs, so your ribcage is being compressed
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: from both sides, so that squeezes everything.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: So I could sit in the center feet at nine G.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: The only problem is though, with your hands below your heart,
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: all the blood pools down and all the capillaries start bursting.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Looks like you come out with measles. Oh wow, So
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: you have to sit there with your s y F
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: sixteen has got the controls propped up for that very reason.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Would your hands down low?
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: You have to stay up above the level of your heart. Yeah, interesting, fascinating.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: So I got through all that and then got sent
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: back to my unit and I was, I think, a
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: course behind where all my mates were, and I was
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: given twenty hours to catch up with the course that
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: I joined. I started off really well, but the closer
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: I got to flying solo, the more on edge I got,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: and basically I'd lost it. I'd lost that edge and
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: so that was it. That was the end of my
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Air Force career.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: Built by off Roaders for off roaders on ex off roads,
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: route Builder provides a new solution to your adventure planning
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: with a snap two functionality. Just draw a line with
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: your cursor and the route will automatically snap to the
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: road or trail. Hit save and the route will sink
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: to your mobile device. Now you're ready to hit the trails.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: Go farther with bonex off roads route Builders.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Isn't it interesting something at the time that can feel
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: so disruptive or not the course that you want for
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: your life. It sets you up to do something that
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: you were Yeah, you were meant to do.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Well, it's driven me to start with. There was never
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: a plan B, so I thought, okay, I need to escape.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: This was nineteen ninety three.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: So people, particularly blokes, British blokes, big tall x army
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: six foot two British blokes, you don't talk about your
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: feelings and you know, mental health problems and all that
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: kind of stuff, so you kind of keep it quiet.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: It's just embarrassing, really, you know, you let yourself down,
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: and you let your team down, you let the military down.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: Like they offered me ground jobs, but I didn't. I
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: didn't feel I was worth or worthy of holding the
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Queen's commission, you know. I thought I don't deserve it.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not good enough. So I although it probably was,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: but I quit. So I needed to take time out
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: to go and rethink what the heck guy was going
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: to do in my life, because there was never a
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: plan B. And so I got a job with a
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: company called dragon Man Overland. They run a fleet of
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Mercedes trucks and anything up to say twenty five twenty seven,
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: sort of backpacking tourists and you drive and they do
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: it all over Africa, South America and Central and Southern Asia.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: And I got a job with them, driving a truck.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: But I got the East eastern Southern Africa bit and
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: it was good.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: It was good. It was It was brilliant, you.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Know, the Gorillas of Zaire, Victoria Falls, Serengetti, Massi, Maha
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Okavango Delta. You know, I spent about a year out there.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: It was amazing, but it wasn't It wasn't tough enough
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: for me. I think the people that were attracted to
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: the Eastern Southern Africa route. It was a bit more
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: sort of like a mobile game fare, you know. It
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: wasn't grizzled, hardcore adventure. Sure, so it was a bit
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: too tame, but gave me an inkling about what would
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: fire me up, what would replace the flying Yeah, sure, yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: So from that point, when did you do your first
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: big trip.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Well, one of the guys so a girlfriend at the time.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: She had a mate who lived in joe Burg, so
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: we went there and an ex boyfriend of hers. All
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: a bit convoluted, but basically he had won Camel Trophy.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: But he won the Camel.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Trophy South Africa and it was pre the abolition of apartheid,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: so they weren't allowed to compete internationally. A guy called
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: Steve Gray, really good guy. But so that's the first
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: time I heard about Camel Trophy. So I came back
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: to the UK, thinking this land Rover stuff, Camel Trophy stuff,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: that is, that's proper hardcore. I love that adventure Africa,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: big long distances, traveling to remote places.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: I love that as well. So I applied for Camel Trophy.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: What year did you It would have been for the
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: ninety six event, and I think there were I don't
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: know if someone told me like ten thousand applicants or something. Anyway,
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: I got down to the last four and went to
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: the international selections in Spain. The Landrover guys like the
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: Bob Ives and the Joe Ives and sort the Camel
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Trophy guys and the Landrover go they well, I was
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: being People were coming up to me at the very
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: end say congratulations, Mac. Who are you taking with you?
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: And I said, well, I don't know if I'm you know,
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: there's four of us here in trying to compete for
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: Team Team GB. I said, I know if I'm going.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: I said, oh, you've got it, mate, We've watched you
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: for the last four days or five days.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: You've got it. You've breezed it, you know, absolutely no
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: problem at all.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: My understanding is the PR girls didn't didn't like me,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: and I didn't get it. I was mortified because I
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: really thought I'd put in everything, so I never I
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: never got to go to Calamantan, which is a real shame.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was one of the last years that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: was the proper one that it was. Yeah, because I
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: applied the next year in nineties, Mongolia wasn't not still
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: in active reserve military. Yeah, I couldn't do it. What
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: an incredible event. I mean, it's shaped for so many
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: of us that do this thing. The Camel Trophy either
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: inspired us initially or inspired us in some way.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's it's the ultimate and I think I think
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: it always will be there, and there's there's elements of
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: it that I still try and introduce into all the
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: projects that I do. You know, there has to be
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: a strong team identity, you know, you look at the
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: Rainforest Challenge, probably tougher than Camel Trophy, very highly tricked
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: up vehicles, you know, horrendous conditions they're trying to drive through.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Every vehicle's different and everybody looks different. You take Camel Trophy,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: every vehicle's you know, got the same markings, the same
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: color scheme, everyone wears the same uniform.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: It's very military in its way. But because of.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: That, there's a sense of belonging, no question, and without
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: even someone telling you you need to be part of
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: a team. By putting all putting on the same shirt,
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: you automatically know you're part of the and therefore you
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: will automatically look out for each other.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And we always make sure that we do that.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Doesn't matter where we go, everybody will have that strong
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: team identity because it just it's you know, groups do it.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: You know religions, you have a certain look. If you're
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: a man.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Might be a religion.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Well, well if you're a true land And they did
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: this in a lander of a magazine, and they did
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: this once, you know how true a land Rover fan
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: are you? And you had to answer all these questions?
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: You know, do you wear a bush hat?
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Yes or no? Do you have a bed? Do you
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: have a love of real ale? Do you carry utility
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: knife with you? And the more of these things you had,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: the more real and so yeah, So I think people
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: need to know they belong to something. I think that's
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: just within human nature.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I agree, And I think it also is why the
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: camel trophy has stood the test of time. If you
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: look at if you were to look at a Rainforest
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Challenge of fifteen years ago. It looks dated, yeah, because
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the accessories that are used in the clothes that the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: people are wearing, or the colors that they use, or
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the livery or whatever. Whereas a Camel Trophy event, they
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: from the very beginning until the very last one or
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: almost the very last one, they looked so similar. Yeah,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: looked I mean you could mix the years. Yeah, and
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: it was just a different drop.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: No, very very inspiring event. So let's let's pivot a
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: little bit into your expedition trips because some of these
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: are just absolutely fascinating. But I'd like to start with
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: your London to Cape Town, which was one of the
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: first things that i mean we met for the first
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: time at the RGS Explore event in London, which is
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I'd highly recommend it. It's it's intended to support young
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: people coming into exploration, into you know, either their own expedition,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: scientific work, humanitarian work. And you were the panel leader
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: for the vehicle based expedition.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the RGS Explorer and it's brilliant. So it's
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: basically it's those that want to do it can be
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: advised and mentored by those that have done it.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what it is.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: You want to climb everest, you want to sail an ocean,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: you want to do some you know, scientific work. You
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: want to track across a desert or through a jungle,
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: somebody will have done it very similar to what you
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: want to do.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: It's I've work with those guys for like twenty years
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: on the Baker side.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Benji Edmondson was there.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Benji da Davenport.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, excuse me, Davenport was there. He was getting ready
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: to go around the world and his Defender one ten
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and he did.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: He absolutely legend, that guy, absolutely legend. Yeah.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: So, and I was so impressed by the care and
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the insight that you had with those young people, and
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: it was so great to meet you. And it was
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: shortly after that, I believe, is when you did the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: London to Keep Count trip.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty ten. We did London a Cape Town.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: I'd done quite a few projects up until that point,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: but the automotive was definitely my thing, and I'd read
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: about it in the Guinness Book of Records years ago.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: You know, if someone had done London in Cape Town,
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: and then you start reading about the history of all
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: these other amazing huge transcontinental driving records, and I just
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: thought to look to that and thought, I'm going to
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: beat that one day, And it was always in the
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: back of my mind. I met Lisa in two thousand
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: and when was it five, and then in two thousand
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: and six I went off to Choyou, the world's sixth
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: highest mountain, to practice for Everest. In two thousand and
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: seven as part of the world's largest ever medical research
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: expedition on Everest, huge sixty intensive care doctors, two hundred
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: and eight volunteers tracking the base camp. We had a
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: Russian helicopter, We had three hundred yaks, three hundred porters,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: forty tons of kit, one hundred and fifty thousand items
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: of equipment, and we had to build medical laboratories, a
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: CapMan do namshy Ferishee base camp camp to camp.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: For and then almost on the summit.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: So I never went above base camp, but some of
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: my logistics team did so I was in charge of
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: all the logistics, communications, base camp manager, expedition manager. I
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: had quite a lot of roles, and Lisa, my good lady.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: She was one of the daft volunteers trektor base camp
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: to be tested on medical grade exercise bikes, so they
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: were flat with exhaustion to see how their body was
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: coping with a lack of oxygen. So we came back
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: from there back to the UK, and having been she
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: was still working where she does now was she was
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: the boss of the World Strongest Man competition, which you
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: may have heard off yea, So she had the proper
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: job and I didn't because we finished the expedition and
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: then so little Sophie came along. She was referred to
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: as what's the first of the Everest babies. A whole
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: series of kids were born. So once everyone got back
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: home safely, nine months plus later, all these little kids
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: arrived and she was the first of the Everest babies.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: I'd been banging on about this London of Cape Tan
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: record and Lisa sah, for God's sake, just shut up
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: and go and do it. So there I am daddy daycare,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: having very cleverly trained my daughter to sleep by day
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: and be awake by night when mom was home, so
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: I could be scheming away and planning how to beat
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: this record. Took me two years to plan it because
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: we were trying to get through Saudi Arabia and then Finally,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: in twenty ten, under the patronage of SARANL. Finds, who
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: had done a North Pole expedition with and was in
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: Alaska with him. With this bearing straight crossing and Sir
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Sterling Moss, a very famous Formula one racer, we set
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: off to try and beat a record that stood for
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: forty seven years and no one had been able to
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: beat it, mainly because there's always a bit of a
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: punch up somewhere in Africa and you can't get through
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: and basically if you want to cross from the northern
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: part to the southern part. I'm not quite sure what
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: it is now with South Sudan, but it used to
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: be if Sudan or Zaiir which is now Democratic Republic
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: of Congo, if either of those were no go areas,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: you couldn't cross because each one of them met in
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: the middle and both had a coastal border. So there
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: are only two countries that basically controlled you moving from
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: north to southern Africa. It was okay, Sudan was okay.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: This was just before the Syrian conflict, so we went
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: through Syria. We eventually got permission to drive through Saudi Arabia.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: When we did our reconnaissance trip because when you leave
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: the clock stop starts at the beginning. So we left
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: at the Royal Automobile Club in London and finished at
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: the Automobile Association building in Cape Town. There was only
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: one ferry to take and that was from Well apart
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: from we went on the Channel Tunnel between the UK
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: and France, but the ferry went from Saudi Arabia to
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Sudan and we were told we had to be there
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: nine o'clock on a Wednesday morning. So the only way
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: to work out when to leave was to go and
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: do a full reconnaissance drive all the way, log everything.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: How long does each border take? How long does it
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: take to drive? Because yes, you know, even if you
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: had a garment system that could tell you it's eighty
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: three hours, but that doesn't really take into account the
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: border crossing times and the complexity.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: It's not like a lot of places where you just
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: rock up.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: There's a booth, passport, next booth, vehicle documents go. You
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: park up, as you know, in the middle of a
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: square somewhere and there's just huts everywhere, and you've got
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: to wander from one to another and say, oh no,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: you can't come here until you've paid your twenty dollars
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: environmental tax, give us that bit of paper, then you
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: can come back and see us. So it takes a
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: long time. I think it was we left New Year's
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: not New Year's Day. Yeah, it was like the first
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: of January. We left twenty ten to do a w rekie,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: got all the way there fairly high speed, got to
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: the Saudi border, so that pass was we were let
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: in and the customs officer was just standing there going
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: no sorry mate, not coming in.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: What steering was on the wrong side? Nobody knew.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: And were sponsored by Landra of Saudi Arabia, they didn't
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: know either. So I had to come home and we
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: finished the wreki off in a higher car. So I
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: came home and had to buy the vehicle that we
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: did the wreki. In the end, I think it was
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: October twenty ten, twenty one countries, ten thousand miles, eleven
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: and a half days unbelieved.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: And does the record still stand No.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: I think we basically put it back on the map.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: And there was a guy called Philip Young. Have you
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: heard of I'm sure you have done the Picking to
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: Paris Rally, the classic car Rally. Yeah, so he'd set
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: that up, very wealthy, very influential, and he ran the
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Classic Car Rally from London the Cape Town, but I
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: think he was doing it as a reconnaissance for his
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: own attempt. Got to Cape Town, worked it all out.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: He had a little Fiat Panda, the twin Air one,
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: only two of them, and they hoooned it back to
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: the UK. So they took it from eleven and a
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: half days to eleven days. But clients on that same
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: under the Cape Town Classic Car Rally obviously as well,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: had an inkling that they were going to do it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: So rather than going south to north, when you arrive
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: in Tunisia waiting for the ferry to Sicily, and you
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: could be there nineteen twenty hours because you don't really
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: know when you leave at the start when you're going
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: to arrive. If you leave from London, you can pretty
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: accurately work out when you're going to arrive for that
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: ferry and you can time your departure within an hour
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: or two, not waiting a day. So they got it
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: from so it went from an our time from eleven
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: and a half days. Philip got it down to eleven
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: and then I can't remember the name of the girl,
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: but I have met him.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: It's now down to eleven days. No, sorry, ten and
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: a half days. Ten and a half days. Yeah, that's
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: but now, of course you can't go through Libya, you really,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't want to. You can't really go.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Through Syria and even Sudan who knows what's going on
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: to the mot So basically the route, the quick route,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: which is the right hand side of Africa is yeah,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: I'll try and get it back one day.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we needed to calm down, you know, you
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: had it.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: We did that, yeah, two and a half, two and
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: a half years, I think we had on two Yeah,
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: but we did get to meet the previous record holder.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: As a pity he's no longer with us, but oh
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: my god, did he have some stories to tell. They
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: did it as a global launch of the Ford Cortina
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty three. They set off going the route
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: that everybody had gone before, down to southern Spain, cross
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: to Morocco and then go into Algeria, right to the
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: middle of the Sahara, Algeria and Nijere sort of beneath Nigeria,
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: and then probably cut across towards late Victoria and then
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: down the right hand side of Africa. So there he is, him,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Eric Jackson and Ken Chambers in this Ford Cortina.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I think it was maybe a sixteen hundred or two
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: liter engine.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: Get to the outskirts of Madrid and all of a
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: sudden there's a whole delegation from the Ford Motor Company there,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: from the Ford Madrid, standing in the middle of the
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: motorway going stop, stop, stop, don't go any further.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Civil war has broken out and they've shut the border
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: between Morocco and Algeria. You can't now cross. Oh my god,
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: you know this is you can't just give up. This
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: is the global launch. You know, Ford have pumped in
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: a huge amount of money into this. So they thought
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: they very quickly went okay, well right, we'll have to
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: go down the right inside of Africa. So they went
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: turned round, went right the way over the top of
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: sort of southern France into Italy, all the way down
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: through Italy to Sicily to Tunisia and to then turn
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: left and go to Libya, Egypt and down that way.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: So most you know, half of their route to Africa
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: they had no maps for they had no idea.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: They hadn't looked at it at all.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: But on the ferry there was a postcard and that
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: postcard had a map of Africa with the main cities
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: on it, and they bought it and that's how they
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: navigated from Tunisia, from tunis basically to Nairobi with this postcard.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this Haberber that's the next one, and we've
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: got to spend the day with him.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: What a character.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Theirs was thirteen days, eight hours and they beat the
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: previous record that have been held in nineteen fifty two.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: They beat it by eighteen minute. That is the ultimate
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: top gear challenge, well eighteen minutes. So yeah, I've still
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: got loads of accounts and I collect anything. If for
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: only the day I'd found it on eBay another paper
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: newspaper cutting from a guy. There's a guy called George
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Hinchliff that had held the record before. He did it
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: twice in one year. He did it in January and
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: Hillman Minx and then they launched this thing called the
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: Humber Super Snite, part of the same group of family
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: of cars, and the boss of the roots group said,
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: can you beat your own record?
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: You know mental? I love it was proper adventure as
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: those guys.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Well, and the logistics around that. So talking about because
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: border crossings are obviously one of the biggest considerations around
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: a record like that, what were some of the things
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: that you learned about border crossings that helped you be
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: more efficient or effective?
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Well, the first one is utmost patients. You know, when
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: you think the guys that are sent out to these borders,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: a lot of them, no respect to them, but a
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: lot of them are probably poorly educated or very little education.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: They're at the lowest of the low rank. They're stuck
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: out there for months of the time in some remote
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: border post. The best, as with any relatively boring job,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: that the best way to make it go quicker is
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: to kind of do stuff, you know, you know, entertain
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: yourself for as long as possible with these poor tourists
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: that have arrived at your border, because it just make
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: the day go a bit quicker. If you just wave
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: them through, then you're just standing there for another six
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: hours waiting for the next car to arrive, So you
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: might as well have a bit of fun. Now, a
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: lot of people can get quite irate with that, that's true,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: and think, you know what I'm not having this. You know,
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: I want to see your superiors, but if you just
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: see it from their point of view, they're stuck out there,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: You've just got to be very calm, very relaxed, absolutely
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: no problem at all. You know, always shades off, like
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: contact is so important when your travel. People find it
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: quite not offensive, but it's it's it's you know, there's
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: a barrier. Yeah, you know, so just take your shades
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: of this, let them see your eyes, be a bit
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: more vulnerable, just be totally relax.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: If they tell you to wait, just go and wait.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: And then eventually I'll just get bored of you because
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: they're not having the fun they thought they were going
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: to have, and they Okay, well we'll let them go
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: and we'll find someone who's going to get a bit
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: more riled up about it and I'll have a bit
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: of fun.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: So that that's kind of one of the key things
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: with borders is just just remember the poor soul that
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: stuck out there and just be very very polite and
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: very respectful to them, and just appreciate that they're probably
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: not really enjoying enjoying that job or the posting they've
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: been given for how many.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Months they're stuck out there. So yeah, the other.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Thing that came to mind for me around your record
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: trip is, you know, one of them other than the
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: efficiency around borders, the second most important thing is to
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: make sure that the vehicle doesn't stop working, because that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: would be a huge delay in your trip. Now, you
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: took a land Rover Discovery too. If I'm thinking with
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: a diesel motor, Yeah, how did you optimize the vehicle
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: for reliability? And then what was your teens around checking
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the vehicles? Did you do that when you start for
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a fuel or how did you do your daily and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: weekly or.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: To be quanted. It wasn't my first choice of vehicle.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember you had tried to get somebody else.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: It was always gonna be land Rover, you know, prow
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: brit doing it for to raise money for help for heroes,
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: this military charity that supports injured soldiers from Iraq and
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: Afghanistan and all the rest of it. So it was
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: always going to be Landrover. We'd get more sponsorship because
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: we were using a land of product, We'd get more
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: coverage to the Lander of magazines and just basically being
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: a good proud brit you want to fly the flag
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Discovery one would have been my choice Landrover defenders when
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: we I did a project where we had to drive
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: all the way to Istanbul, across Turkey to Georgia, up
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: to the highest mountain in Georgia and oh my god,
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: I'm too tall to sit in a defender for too long.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: It was too uncomfortable, So that was never going to happen.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Range rovers were too complex and free landers were too small.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: But I've always felt that Discovery has basically been Landrover's
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: finest hour. It's an absolute jack of all trades. And
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: when I was training for this Camel Trophy we had
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: the Discovery one, I could not believe the places this
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: thing could go. With slightly tall attires. It was basically
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: keeping up with any defender. Yes, it's got a bit
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: more of a back end hanging out and you could
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: ground out a touch, but really there wasn't much in
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: it and the comfort levels. Now, the problem is, although
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: we wanted a Discovery one because it's three hundred TEDI engine,
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: it's all mechanical, much simpler to fix. I'm six two,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: my brother six to two, and the other guy driving
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: was a six footer. We couldn't sleep in the back
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: it was too short. We tried sleeping across the back
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: seats and that didn't work. We tried sleeping lengthways. That
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: didn't work, and in fact the only thing that did
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: work was almost diagonally with your feet behind because it
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: was a left hooker behind the cod driver and your
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: head is far away from possible, so you didn't hear
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: the chatter up front. In the rear left of the
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: car and the Discovery two, I think it's like seven
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: or nine inches longer it is. So Unfortunately with that
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: came a TD five engine with its ECUs, so I
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: wasn't happy about that. It's a good motor, it's a
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: good motor. A lot of them have got air suspension.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: Well we ripped that out and put coil springs on,
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: so we remove that possible failure point. A lot of
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: them will have active suspension. So with the hydraulic rams,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: all that went. And even since I got back, I've
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: even taken the air conditioning off, anything that if it failed,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: could stop that engine. You know, if an air conditioning
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: motor seized, it would throw the belt, the belt could
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: see something else. So I don't need it, you know,
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: I'll just acclimatize. So yeah, we went for the TD five,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: but we made sure that we had another ECU pre
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: programmed and we checked it. It was a complete plug
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: and play, put it out, put it in. There was
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: no sitting there with diagnostics kit. We did take a
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: diagnostics tour with us. But the thing was, every bit
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: of effort was put into the basic mechanics of the vehicle.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: It was not the accessories that we could bolt onto
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: the outside of it. So there was a particular bolt
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: that held the oil pump on, and there was reports
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: that some models in the factory didn't either weren't talked
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: correctly or didn't have the right threadlock on because it
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: was a we don't know. It's quite a major job,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: you know, to pull the potom of the engine off
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: and replace this bolt.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: But that was done.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: A new clutch was done, new brakes were done, the
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: suspension was checked, the boring stuff was done, new water pumps,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: We took the fan off the viscous family stuck an
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: electric one on for fuel saving. That wasn't It didn't
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: cause us problems, but in hindsight, I probably wouldn't have
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: done that because that could have been a failure but
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: it was all the boring stuff that was focused on.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Alloy wheels were removed. Heavy duty steel.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Wheels are put on because as we know, you can
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: just beat them straight with a hammer. Anybody in African
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: African village will have a welder. They may not have
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: the welding rods, so you carry them. But who can
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: weld alloy in? No one can weld alloy. You know,
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: if you need to be, you just start jumping batteries
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: together and you can weld. You can weld steel, but
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: welding alloy it's a completely different ball game.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: So alloy wheels off.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: We did fit an external rollcage, but that was just
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: for safety. We did carry two spares, didn't need any
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: of them, but it was just that kind of stuff
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: that we checked. And we took it up to a
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: company in the in the northeast called a Live Tuning
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: and they tuned it for economy, not for performance. We
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: did fit a long range fuel tank, but I'm very
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: anything that's permanent. I'm very wary of you puncture a
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: long range fuel tank. And if that's the only source
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: of fuel you've got and you could drain the lot,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: you might be able to repair that tank, but you've
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: now got no fuel in it. So we would carry
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: jerry cans of fuel because one, you've always got that safety.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: I'm always carrying twenty or forty liters in the can
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: and the odds of that getting damaged are pretty minimal.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: Plus there may be occasions when I can't get the
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: car near the fuel source. You know it's abandoned. I
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: need to go and get fuel. What am I going
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: to go and get it in? You know you can
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: take a Jerry can. The same with water tanks. I'm
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: not a big fan either, you know, And that's very
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: important in what I call your survival rule of three
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: waters number two, sorry, number three in the list of
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: your survival priorities. So don't carry all your water in
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: a tank because if you've split the tank, you've lost
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: a lot.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: So it was number one.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: Number one is oxygen stuff in it abcs if you
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: get it wrong. And this goes right down to the
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: basics of building a vehicle. So for example, if you
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: decide you've modified the suspend and too much, you're carrying
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: too much weight, you're traveling too fast, you're driving at night,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: and you haven't got the right lights.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: There are a whole load of.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Things that could ultimately end up with you screwing it
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: up and having an accident. And if you get it
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: wrong and stick your head through that windscreen and you
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: have a catastrophic bleed three minutes, that's your life expectancy.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: So you have to then work back all those little
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: decisions you might have made before. You don't want to
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: cause yourself a three minute failure. Don't pick the wrong brakes,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: you know, don't do this, don't do that. Get the
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: right training, you know, so that you don't smack it
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: into a pothole and just rip the front of the
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: car off. So three minutes is oxygen. The next one
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: is shelter, and we're talking more extreme environments. We're not
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: talking lovely sunny day now or in the desert. We're
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: talking the cold, but it doesn't have to be that cold.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: And we're not talking about shelter tent shelter, which is
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: what most people think. We're talking naked body shell the
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: clothing that you're wearing. So I'm not a big fan
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: of roof tents because shelters you're number two. So it's
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: all wrong, and you're in a cold environment and you
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: don't have any shelters three hours. So you could be
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: going up to Scotland. Now you know, I've been up
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: there in June, so it's what now eighteen twenty degrees.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: It's lovely here. I could sit here in the underpants
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: and I wouldn't survive all night. Go up to Scotland,
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: which is not an extreme place in the middle of
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: the summer. I've had minus eighteen winchill up there. If
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: I'm up there in a pair of swimming trunks three hours,
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: I'm going to be a bit of a mess, you know,
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: probably incapable of doing anything. So that's my three hour rule.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: So your shelter is number two. So if you've got
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: a roof tent and your car goes up in flames,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: which is not uncommon. You can never say no cars
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: ever caught fire in the middle of the desert and
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: your shelter is going up in smoke, that's your three
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: hours gone, you know. So you've got to carry even
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: with a rooftan, you've got to carry something. You've got
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: to have a small cheap forty quid millets, you know.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: So we were just finishing up talking about the the
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: top three. So we've got you know, don't make decisions
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: that keep you from doing a fatal injury to yourself
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: or to the people that you're with. YEA, honoring yourself
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: and honoring your travel mates their safety. And then the
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: second one is make sure if you have a breakdown
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and you're in someplace remote, that you have a way
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: to stay out of the weather. Absolutely, And you and
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I have both been in conditions where it would be
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: counted in probably minutes, not even hours. Yeah, you were
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: at minus sixty in Siberia, Siberia.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: I've been to that area, but not during the winter
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: like you did. And the coldest that I ever experienced
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: was minus fifty seven, which was actually in Canada.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: But your hands, you know, I think even at minus forty.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: I went out and did a reconnaissance out there about
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: a couple of years later, and I was wandering around
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: you cut to the world's colder city, and I was
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: taking I was doing.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Some video with my phone.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize I could have pressed a button, so
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: I took my glove off to press them one minute,
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: one minute, and my hand is absolutely useless. So you
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: think like doing up a jacket or open a car door,
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: or getting into a building and you've got dead hands.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: One minute is all you've got.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: It's quite scary how quickly it can go so horribly wrong.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The frostlight that I experienced was from that exact
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: same situation.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: I was taking photographs of an aurora in Greenland on
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the ice sheet minus forty. Yeah, a few minutes and
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: my fingers stopped working.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Even I was so enthralled by the image and the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: view that I saw that I wasn't I forgot about myself. Yeah,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: And the only reason why I knew it was happening
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: is because my fingers stopped moving. It actually stopped moving.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: The joint lockdown. Yeah, and then I realized I couldn't
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: feel the hand at all, Yeah, which is terrifying. So
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: that's number two.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: And then the number three is water.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: The average person, average conditions, can survive three days without water,
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: So three minutes for oxygen, you know, really, that's all
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: you've got ad conditions. You know, it could be a
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: lot quicker shorter, but on average three hours three days
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: without average person go for three days without water and
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: then three weeks without food.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: So your last and.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: So a lot of people you're here about, you know,
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: crank you. You know, you've got to drive hard through
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: the night. You know, we can't stop here. We've got
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: to get to somewhere to get food. So we're going
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: to risk driving in the dark, wild animals, unlit vehicles,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: poor lighting on the vehicle. We're tired, You've got shelter,
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: you have a tent, you have you could be in
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: the car, you have water. But you're pushing, pushing, pushing
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: to try and get to somewhere before the restaurant closes
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, bang, big accident through the windscreen.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: You're trying to achieve something that you know, if you knew,
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: you could go three weeks without. But now you've just
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: taken it from three weeks to three minutes because you've
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: cocked up. You know, So as long as you know
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: the order what's going to kill you first a lot
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: of it, you can just push right back to the
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: very back and go, do you know what, I don't
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: even have to worry about that. I've just got to
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: keep myself safe and my team's safe, and we've got
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: to keep out the weather. And definitely with the roof
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: tent thing, you've got to carry another tent and with
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: the water, don't don't have it, don't have it in
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: one big tank.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't carry some jerry cans.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know that For a lot of it depends
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: on what your goals are. But for a lot of people,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think the roof ten is the best choice.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I think for the weekend travels or you know, if
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: you're in the in the deserts, they're fine, But if
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: you're in very technical terrain or if you're in very
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: extreme weather, they just aren't the best choice.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there's the weight factor. Well one A lot
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: of it for me is just a sheer expense of them.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: You know, you're basically paying a couple of grand for
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: a scout tent from the ninety nineteen fifties. You'd never
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: find one of those tents that ever a space camp.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: You know, it's all high tech materials. Now, there's the
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: weight that's up there.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: You've got resistance, yeah, less fuel range.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: So you know how pow would you feel if you've
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: conked out of fuel because this thing's now doing fifteen
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: to the gallon, not.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: Twenty five to the gallon.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: Because you've got this brick on the roof, it won't
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: handle so well, but it's really this if it all
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: goes wrong. You know, there are a lot of little
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: factors that are just nigli, but it's the all go wrong.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: And my worry is if a car went up in
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: flames or ended up, you've rolled it, you've got out,
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: But this thing's halfway down a ravine and or upside down,
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: and your your shelter is now underneath the car.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: I say, they get their place.
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: But I had a chat with Andrew Sampierre White for
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: one of his things, and I think he told me
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: fell out, fell out the tent. He slipped coming down
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: the ladder. No, I don't know whether he knocked his
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: arm or his leg, but he was on his own,
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: and it was a bit touchy as to whether he
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: could actually then drive himself out of that situation.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: If there've been a ground tent doesn't doesn't matter how,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how drunk you get, You're not gonna
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: you're going to fall off it.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: You know. Well, that's why normally I like to just
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I have my choice, sleep inside. And then the food
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: thing is an interesting one. A few years ago, I
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: just as a personal test, I just I just decided
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to eat for seven days, and you know,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I've got a little bit more calories on my frame
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: than the average. And so I mean the first couple
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: of days you feel like you're going to lose your mind.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Oh god, Yeah, but that's just you just realize that
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: you're fine and your body's just screaming at you. It's
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: trying to take that control.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: By the day time you get through the third day,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: then you're not thinking about it as much. Yeah, the
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: fourth day you're not thinking about it at all.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: No.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: And the other thing, weirdly is if because of knowing
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: the order, water is more important than food. If you
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: say you are in a situation where you've got tons
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: of food and particularly things like meat products or chocolate products, but.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: You've got no water, don't eat, you'd want.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: To be thinking, Christ, I've got to wait, I'm so
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: bloody's starving. But in order to digest that chocolate all
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: that meat in particular, your body needs an awful lot
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: of water so it will dehydrate you quicker. So actually
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: you've just got to sit there and just look at
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: that food and don't touch it because water.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Water is more important.
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: You could obviously, if you can extract any juice out
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: of it, That's one thing. But yeah, in a really
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: bad survivable situation with loads of food and no water,
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: don't eat it.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: The next thing I want to talk about is kind
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: of your When I talked to you earlier, we discussed
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the fact that travel. How has travel changed you as
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: a person? Like how has travel influenced your life?
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: To start with, when I went off to Africa having
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: you know, had that horrible situation in the Air Force
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: where I had that panic attack, it was just an
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: escape and then I came back and I kind of
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: led almost sort of a I don't know, it's like
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: an identity crisis or whether I was leading almost like
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: two different lives back in the UK because I wanted
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: to do expeditions and therefore I had to be available
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: at the drop of a hat to go off and
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: do stuff. And when I was working with Serranald Fines,
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: it was a big plan to go London to New
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: York via the Bearing Straits to celebrate Landover's fiftith anniversary,
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: and I got out of However, many applied for it,
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: there were lots.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: I was the guy. I got selected for that team.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: So we spent three months on the Alaskan side with
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: these tracked, amphibious landrover defenders working out how to get
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: across the sea ice from Russia to Alaska in order
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: to be to do that, and most of them were unpaid.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: You couldn't accept a normal job in the UK because
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: you had to be available at any moment to go right.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: I'm out of here.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: I ended up kind of sleeping on mate's floors or
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: lodging with them and just taking I was an off
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: road driving instructor. I was a rally driving instructor. I
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: used to drive a truck for one of the Formula
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: One race teams, but very bitsy work, which didn't really
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: make me feel particularly good about myself because it was
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: relatively low paid. It wasn't you know, And particularly with
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: the guys I went through training with so too, in
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: particular when harriers the vertical jumper aircraft. One of them
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: then became a pilot in the Red Arrows. One of
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: them now is second in command of the entire Royal
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: Air Force.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: He probably will be, and.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: I'll almost put money on it, he will be Chief
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: of the Air Staff. He will be the bott of
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: the Air Force in about three years time. Absolutely brilliant guy.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: So when you hear about the life that you should
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: have led, or you wanted a lead and you're driving
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: a truck or no disrespect to truck drivers. I'm not
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: trying to disrestract anybody. But I felt I should have
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: been doing something different and I wasn't, and I couldn't,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: and I just felt that my life was kind of
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: going downhill. But it was expeditions.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: It was getting on those expeditions, getting in the team,
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: and the more challenging the expedition. It was kind of
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: proving to myself and proving to others, and I wasn't.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I kind of felt like I was a nutter. You know,
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: I had this mental health problem, you know, I had
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: this panic attack. So I felt very inferior to other people,
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: to other blokes in particular, and very embarrassed about the
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: whole situation. And so I was leading kind of two lives.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: My life in the UK was one of kind of
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: loneliness and depression and not being able to cope and
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: not I didn't want to hear.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: About what I used to shut my shot myself away.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: So it was definitely a form of kind of PTSD
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: where you kind of withdraw into yourself. You don't really
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: want to talk to people about it because it's just
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: too embarrassing.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: Oh, I had a mental health problem, you know, because
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: then it manifested itself into other problems. So and I
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: probably haven't divulgius to anybody. I mean probably Lisa knows
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: So you know.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: I used to have problems going on the underground, going
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: into a on a in a lift, even certainly A
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: big problem was driving the race truck through a tunnel,
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: a long long tunnel. It was called the Phraseous Tunnel
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: between France, and it's like sixteen kilometers long or something.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: It was like being in that plane and if I
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: had a panic and had to just stop at any
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: point in that tunnel to get out and have a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: I'd block the whole tunnel and then emergency services would
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: turn up. So I used to get really really anxious
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: about going in this tunnel. And then it started to
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: get to the point where you go on a contraflow.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: So there's roadworks on the motorway and they force you
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: onto the opposite carriageway, but you're running between two lines
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: of cones. There's nowhere to pull over. So if you
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: can't make the three four five miles to the other side.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: When you can get over and pull over on the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: hard shoulder, you'd just block the entire motorway. So I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: used to get really anxious about that. My life in
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: the UK was going the wrong way. It was, it
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: was spiraling down.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: I used to lodge with the mate up in Surrey,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: and then I ended up living in a caravan. I
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: then ended up living with They Do Do. I ended
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: up living in a garage roof with a little camping
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: stove in the corner. Now I was never a hobo
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: on the streets, but I could see how easily it
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: is to get there, you know, really easily. So Expeditions
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: when I did get on a project with Sir Renold Fans,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: because if you've worked with Renold Fins, you know it's
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: going to be tough, it's going to be challenging.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: It's not a holiday.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: This is a proper it's never been done before, or
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: if it has been done, we're going to do it quicker, faster,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: better or whatever or tougher. So when you get onto that,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: then I felt alive again. And so Expeditions it wasn't
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: a question of making me feel alive, as in I
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: just felt good about life. I think it was actually
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: keeping me alive because I ended up starting I think
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: I knew when I started to really have problems when
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: I used to have to start drinking before I went
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: to bed, so I had a bottle of scotch, bottle
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: of whiskey next to me, and I used to have
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: to have a glass because my brain would not switch off.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And it didn't matter what I tried to do. I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: just didn't seem to be able to break out of
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: the situation I was in. I never seemed to be
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: at a where do you ever find a job advertising
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: expedition person? You just you just don't you don't, you know.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: And I didn't want to be a plumber or electrician
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: or a driver. I wanted to be an explorer an adventurer,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: but I wanted to do it with vehicles. But you
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: don't find those jobs. So you can't go to the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: careers office and go, you know, I look at all
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: the jobs please to be and so you just had
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: to somehow have this self belief that it was going
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: to get better. But the longer it went on and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: wasn't getting better, and you weren't finding those jobs, the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: more depressed you've got. And so when opportunities did come
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: and you're in those situations working with the best people ever,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: you're in that team, you're tightly knit. It's a remote
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: part of the world. You're meeting the most incredible people
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: who are so friendly, And the more remote you go,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: the more friendly and hospitable they are, the more wonderful
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: stories they have, the culture, the food, the things they drink,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: the way they live. I'm fascinated by it all. I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: love it, And so each time I could store that
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: in the back of my head. So when I came
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: home and I'm back in my garage roof and I'm
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: shutting myself away from all my mates that are pilots
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: and executives and directors of company, some nice big houses
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: and fancy holidays and BMW's, and now I am with squat.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: You know, I could just hang on to that, thinking
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: it will work out eventually. And then I got together
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: with Lisa, and she probably doesn't get anywhere near the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: credits she should.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Basically, she kind of saved me. Really, I don't know
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: why she thought. She obviously saw some potential that I
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: couldn't sit or she was just desperate. I think it
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: was probably the latter. It was.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Once there was some stability with her, things started to
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: pick up. And then I got out of the blue.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: I got this asked and do this Everest, this big
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: medical research expedition on Everest. So I go off and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: see these doctors. Now we're talking the best of the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: best medical science in the UK, and there they are.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: They're going to try and do the largest ever medical
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: research expedition on Everest. It's a three month project, it's huge.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: BBC are going to be there, two one hour documentaries,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: primetime television. We've got Shirt pretending Son is part of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: the team. They've got the Imax film crew are there
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: filming him, but filming us. And I turned up to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: meet the expedition in Leading and I thought, what can
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: I bring to you know, these guys as superheroes, these doctors,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: anything they could do, you know, far goes beyond anything
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: I can do. Didn't take me too long to realize
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: that actually, as brilliant as they are in their medical profession,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: when it comes to expedition logistics and planning, no disrespect
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: to them, but my god, they haven't got a clue.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: And so I could actually contribute something to it. And
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: actually I massed to contribute a heck of a lot
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: to it.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: And so like that was you or I needed to
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: remove a garbladder. Yeah, I don't even know where to
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: cut absolutely, so we all have restraints.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I really found a place, and then
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: and then and then it just started to build. And
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: you know, the garage roof I lived in was half
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: a mile down the road. I live in a four
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: bedroom house with an acre of land. We got horses
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: and you know, beautiful countryside. It's a totally desirable So
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: you can you can always at least there was the
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: key then, yeah, yeah, and you can always imagine that
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: life conspire all that way incredibly quickly. You can always
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: imagine if it all goes wrong, if you lose job,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: you get divorced, you know whatever.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: You can always think cricky.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: I can see how it goes that way so quickly,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: but you can never really imagine how it can go
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: that way so equally as quickly. And that's what happened
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: for me. I don't know how the heck it happened.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: But what's persistence? For sure?
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think I had I had to
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: I had to stick with the dream. I had to
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: because that was the only thing that was going to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: replace the thrill and the excitement of being a fast
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: jet pilot. It and it wasn't just the flying, it
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: was the people you were with. It was the confidence
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: that it gave me, the self respect, the self esteem
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: I could hold my head up in society and fun
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: amongst everybody. And when all that fell apart, I didn't
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: just lose a flying career. I lost my best mates.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: You know, as you know as a next military person.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: They're more than just mates. They're real brothers, aren't they.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: You know, you do anything for them because you've you've
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: been through it all, probably a lot more than your own,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: your own flesh and blood, you know, yeah, And so
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: you lose that, you lose your self respect, your confidence.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: So that's why I've kind of lost everything, and it
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: all went wrong. And so it was the expeditions. It
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: was being back amongst those like minded people that just
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: kept me going the right way. And so anyway, so
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: Lisa said, for God's sake, shut up and just going
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: to London to Cape Town, and I did. Came back
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: to the UK. I got a call, I kid, you not.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: It was something like five days. Somebody had read about
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: it or heard about it or something. They were putting
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: together an extreme driving series for Discovery Channel being paid
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: for by Shell to promote the Shell Helix engine oil
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: and they needed somebody to plan it, deliver it, lead
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: it everything. And they'd obviously looked at the website and thought,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Craiche he's done the Alaska thing with Ranald Fines. He
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: was his right hand man and his last North Pole expedition.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: If he's good enough for Sir Ranald Fines, he's good
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: enough for us. And I just got mac.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: Here's the job.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: It was a six word brief. It was originally hottest, coldest, highest, Russia, China, India.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Make it happen, and that was it. There was no interview.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: It was six words, make it happen. And so the
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: highest Actually I did the reky for it. The Indians
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: like to say it's the highest road in the world.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: It's not cardung Lah, but they like.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: To say it is. It is it is.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: Oh, now you're asking there, Well, you've got Oyostel Salad.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: That's all the world altitude records I've been held on
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: Oyostel Salado. So there is a track that goes to
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: five eight hundred meters. Cardong Lar is about five six.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: You tell your other one in Chile.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, where the.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: World altitude record is, there's another one. I don't think
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: it's on that Concaguar. There's another mountain.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: There's a there was.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: They were mining at something like six thousand meters, driving
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: these trucks up there. But I've been I've taken classic
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: cars over over passing in Tibet. They were five to
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: six so definitely higher than cardung La in the Indian Himalayas.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so I was given this six word brief,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: make it happen, and it was. It was still to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: this date the most expensive advertiser funded program produced in
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: the United Kingdom.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: I think it was like five million or something.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: So we took the Hollywood actor Tom Hardy, who plays
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: Mad Max. He was the Baddy and the Batman film
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: Bane with the Mask. We took him to Siberia.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: It seems like he's he's a bit of an adventurer
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: in Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: It's surprising the number of actors that that love what
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: we love, you know, you know, I mean, obviously you know,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: the long way round with Ewan McGregor and all that
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: comes to mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Tom Hanks, he's got
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: a Syncro Folkswagen Sincro Man has done a bunch of
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: overlanding with that. I mean, I mean it's surprising the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: number of actors that. Yeah, and it makes sense. It's
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a way for them to escape from what is has
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: got to be a very intense one.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: Well that was That was the other thing.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: So one you know, you've got You've got Tom Hardy there,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: he just earned.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: What did he tell us he earned?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: It was something ridiculous like sixteen million dollars for being
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: the Baddy and the Batman film. And then we've got
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: Mikasalo and ex Ferrari F one racer there.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: That was Siberia.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: And then we took Henry Cavill who plays Superman, and
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: Neil Hodgson, former World super Bike Champion of the Desert
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: of Western China. So we've gone from minus sixty to
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: plus fifty. And then Adrian Brodie, the young Oscar winner.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: What a cool bloke he is, you know, so we
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: took him to the Malaysian jungle and Mickuso enjoyed Siberia
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: so much.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: You came and did that one with us. Absolutely brilliant guys.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: But so there, you know, there we are, so Tom Hardy's,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: you've been at your cut. So we're in the Polar
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: Hotel or whatever it's calling your cuts. Yeah, probably everyone
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: who goes to and so we're sitting there. Everyone looks
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: the same. And I made it very clear, I don't
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: care how much you weren't for your last film. If
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: it all goes wrong, you ain't getting out of this
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: situation any quicker than the rest of us. We're all
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: in it together. We all look after each other. There's
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: no I'm worth this amount of money. I'll sit in
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: the car when it's warm. You guys are outside fixing
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: problems or dealing with stuff. We all look after each other.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: We buddy buddy all the time. And they just got
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: it just you know, straight away. You know, I didn't.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Probably relieved to be just a part of it.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And basically what goes on tour stays on tours,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: you know, So you could be very open about stuff,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: you could chat about stuff, and they just knew it
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: just wasn't going to go any further and the press
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: were never going to hear about it. So any any
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: of the funny things that we got up to. It
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: was just going to be whatever was going to show
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: on camera, and it meant they could really relax, get
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: away from all. And I think this is why Prince
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: Harry probably got on very well in the military.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: Same sort of approach.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: The life he's leading at the moment, I'm sure he
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: isn't doing him any favors. He probably needs to get
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: away and do a few more expedition ly type things
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: with like minded people.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Like I'm pretty happy when I saw him in Antarctica
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: he was doing hard things.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's more than just it's more than just travel.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: It's I did have a proper saying for and what
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: it is now, but it's certainly it's it's certainly has
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: kept me on the straight and narrow.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: You know. It fires me up. And I think the
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: main thing is the people that you're doing it with,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: you know, because you've got those shared stories.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: But isn't that so much you know? You know. An
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: anecdote for life is that we think that our status
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: will make us happy. It can't because the status can
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: be removed so quick. Yeah, we think that money can
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: make us happy, but we can lose money, and statistically,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: after you make about seventy eighty thousand dollars, you don't
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: get any happier. So maybe fifty sixty thousand pounds, you're
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: not any happier than you are, you know, if you're
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: making two million pounds.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of times people are less happy
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day. It is about the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: experiences that we have. And that was what you were
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: searching for, you searching for connection with the people that
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: you traveled with going on that Everest expedition. You met
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: your partner, you now have a daughter with her. These
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: are things that are far beyond any amount of money
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: or any amount of steny.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And those are the things that bring you the
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: most joyous. Yeah, Doing hard things and hard places with
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: people that you want to be there with and having
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: memories and experiences in that. And so I think that
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: that's an anecdote for life that we're supposed to do
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: hard things, we're supposed to do it with you.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: And I think the other thing is I've just quite stubbornly,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: you know, I could have failed, and I've probably got
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: quite did I ever get quite close to it? Part
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: of me was telling me I needed to give up.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: I needed to go and get a proper job, you know.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: And there was another big part of me, probably bigger
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: because I'm still doing what I love was I was
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: never going to be happy doing that. This makes me,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: you know, incredibly happy, A good made of mind. I
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: went to school with. All he ever wanted to do
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: when we were kids was being an ornithologist. He wanted
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: to work for the Natural History Museum, bird preservation. He
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: wanted to travel the world, you know, study bird species,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: protect bird species, educate people, you know, inspire children to
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: look after the environment. That was his absolute, living, breathing passion.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: So we finished a levels, which is, you know, about
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: eighteen years of age. He wanted to go to university.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: But his parents, who were you know they were They
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: lived in the bigger detached house that had his own
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: private practice, so you know, financially, they were much more
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: able to support him through UNI than say, my family work.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: You know, kids didn't really go to uniqu when I
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: was you know that often when I was a kid,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: his parents looked at him ornithology, well that's not a
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: real job, but not support him. And they gave him
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: three weeks after having done a levels to go and
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: get a proper job. So there were lots of insurance
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: companies near where we lived in Surrey, and so we
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: just went to get a job with them, processing motor claims.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: You know, oh, I've crashed my car, you know, send
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: me the paperwork and I pull it in and you
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: know he's still there. You know, he's a broken man,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: absolute broken man because of the relatively unsupportive environment he
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: lived with at home. He had to at his own place.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: And now he's got a mortgage, so he has to
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: stick with the job to pay the mortgage. That's it.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: And you look at him and I used to actually
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: lookup to him. I used to lodge with him for
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: a couple of years, and you know, yes, he had
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: the nice house, he had the BMW and the driver.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: He used to go on holiday.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: He still did his bird watching and stuff, and you
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: know he'd run around the countryside and spend weekends doing
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: stuff and go off on holidays and different parts of
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: the world and mates doing bird watching. And I used
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: to be quite envious, thinking, oh, cracky, you know, I'm
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: getting on for faulty. I've really cocked this up, and
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: I'm sleeping on mate's floors. I got no one to
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: live and still haven't got a proper job. And then somehow,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: because of my persistent self belief, dogged determination to make
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: it work, I've kind of been rewarded for it. He
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: had the proper job, he did the CeNSE of a thing,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: and he's actually not been punished for it. But he
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: doesn't live in a very nice area. It's all gone
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: a bit wrong for him. Yeah, I've been blessed with
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: a living in a wonderful part of the world, which
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: most people, you know, people come on holiday to this
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: part of the world, you know, So I feel Yeah,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: I think because if you don't have any passion and
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: enthusiasm for whatever it is that you want to do
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: in life, you're not really gonna you're not going to
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: excel in other other areas. Because you know, he never
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: wanted to be an insurance guy, so of course he's
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: never going to get picked up to become a manager
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: or a director or anything. So he's just sit at
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: the bottom, you know, processing his motor claims. I've wanted
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: to always do this kind of adventurous stuff and it's
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: it's just fires me up. It makes me come alive.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: You know, every time I get the call, you know,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: can you plan this for us? Can you, you know,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: create that? Can you design something? Can you you know,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: put something together. I'm I'm loving it, absolutely loving it.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: It's not a job. It's kind of amazing at times. Yeah,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: what we do?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah. What advice would you give to someone that's
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: just getting started with overland travel? What pieces of wisdom?
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Which kind of your elevator pitch that you would give
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: to someone that was getting ready to do a victory?
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: My elevator pitch is spend the least amount of money
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: you can on the vehicle and just go and do it.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: You know, any vehicle will take you around the world.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: We all heard of the Mongol rally, you know, and
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: Nis and Micra. You could pick one up for five
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: hundred quid. What's that six hundred and seve hundred dollars?
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: Little one liter engine? You can fix it yourself. You'll
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: learn so much. Just get on the road and go.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: Worry about the big fancy four by fours and the
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: roof tents and the special suspension and the long range
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: fuel tanks and all the trimmings that you can see
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: in the magazines.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: Worry about that later. Just get something and get out there.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: And see if you even like it. Yeah, start off
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: with building some experience.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what I said to Benja Davenport. You
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: came to the Ray Geographical Society. I think it was
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: like three years on the trot wanting to ask very
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: specific questions about particular components of the vvehicle, very detailed stuff.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: And I looked at him at the end of the
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: third year and I said, Benji, I do not want
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: to see you here next year.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: You know, postcards, Yeah, you know everything.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: That vehicle is good to go. You know, you could
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: take that out of the out of the factory, ready
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: to go. It will take you around the world. Just
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: go do it. And then he did, and he's thanked
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: me for it. Yeah, you just have a blast.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: You'll meet the most amazing people, and you will learn
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: so much about yourself and others and cultures.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: And it's just the life on the road.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: So when we driven to Extreme Series, so we airlifted
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: the cars to the start point to the colder city.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: So that was quite expensive chartering and bowing seven five
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: seven as you can imagine, got them to the coldest city.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: We're about there, me and the mechanic Paul. We're about
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: there a week before the film crew and Tom Hardy
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: and Micassalo.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Came out, so you had to drive down the frozen.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so we drove. We drove out on your
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: Connum back. That was about ten days and then they
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: went home. So the next film is to be run
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: in western China, so the best way was for Meat
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: and the mechanic to drive out Nissan patrols from Far
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: Siberia all the way down to the bottom of Lake
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: by Cow, all the way across Mongolia, all the wear
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: across China getting ready for Henry Kavill and Neil Hodgson
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: for the next one. And then once they'd done that,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: we drove to Singapore and being paid for this. But
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: the best thing was with overland travel is if you
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: do regular travel, I've never been I've done two holidays
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: in my life and they were both skiing trips, and
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: that's all I've ever done since the day i was born.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: Because as a.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: Kid, we'd come down to the West Country to the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: cottage and I'd run riot all around the fields and
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: the woodlands around here. So I've never looked in a
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: brochure and paid to go on a holiday. Apart from
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: two skiing trips, that's all I've done in more than
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: more years than I care to remember of my age.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: But I guess with regular holidays, you'll look at a
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: brochure and you have preconceived ideas, Oh, taj mahal, it's
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: going to be amazing. It's going to be this, that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: and other, and if you rock up and you go, oh, actually,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: it's not quite as good as I thought it was
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: going to be. I thought it was going to be
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: you know, grander and this, and the food was going
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: to be better and the view and it wouldn't be
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: you know, ten thousand people here. You know, with overlanding,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: if you just have a start point and a finish
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: point and you don't really know what's in the middle,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: you are going to come across the most amazing things
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: and meet the most amazing people. They're not going to
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: appear in any travel brochure. You're not going to know
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: about it. You're just going to stumble across it and
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: those memories will last a lifetime.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: Well that's what you did for me today. You were
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: sending me all of these little spots to Yeah, it's
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: a visit between where I left north of London, and yeah,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: it was magic.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: And so when we relocated from far eastern Siberia, we're
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: heading down towards Lake by Karl. We've got our guide
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: with us, Slava. We just round a hill and we
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: go across a bridge and then we look to the
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: left and there's like a thousand people out on this
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: frozen river. And I said to Slava, what's going on there?
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: No idea, he said. So we turned round and it
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: was the annual reindeer festival and we didn't know. We
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: just happened to be there on the right day. And
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: that's it. You know, we're part of the vehicle up.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: Let's go and have a look. And it was incredible.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: And even even basic things like when you do a
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: lot of traveling, you don't want to have too much
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: of a heavy lunch, certainly if you've got a drive
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: in the afternoon. So you can imagine, you know, particularly
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: in the UK, you know, a Sunday roast is quite
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: a traditional thing. Family comes together, big Sunday roast. All
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: the men of the family come three o'clock. They're all
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: flat out on the sofa, snoring away like mad because
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: what happens is your body drains blood into your stomach
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: to digest all that food. So after having had a
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: very heavy meal, you become very tired. And so it's
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: quite dangerous driving to have a heavy lunch. You want
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: a really light lunch, save your heavy evening meal for later.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: So yeah, once you're done driving. So it was only
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: a little bowl of soup and some bread, and so
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: we're just stopping at these truckers calfs. They wouldn't appear
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: in any brochure, you know, just really rough truckers cat
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: and we're having this Sally Anchor soup with fourteen different
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: types of meat and an olive and a slice of
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: lemon and a little bit.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, so good.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: It was to die for.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: It was absolutely and it was just really really cheap, unpretentious,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: basic food.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: It was just well, I think if you think about it,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: that the truckers are that they're professional and they're gonna
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: they're not gonna stop at the places that isn't good.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: They do this trip, yeah all the time. Where you
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: see the trucks parked, it's usually pretty good.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's little stuff like that though.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: I still remember, and that's from twenty twelve, and it's
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: still a hugely fond memory in the back of my head.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Because then we remember being I was in the walk
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: on corridor of Afghanistan and Tajikistan and we stopped at
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: this little village and I had this rice peelof that
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: and it had goat or sheep or something, and it
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: was just it was so delicious. The only thing that
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: they had there was no menu. You sat down and
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: that's what they served you because that's what they made that. Yeah,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: and it was one of the best meals I've ever
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: had in my life. And I think a lot of
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: it was because of what we talked about before, which
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: was I was doing something difficult, I was doing something
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: that I was passionate about. I was with someone that
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: I cared about, my good friend Charlie, And I think
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: that that's why that meal is so memorable. But all
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: of it came together in that moment.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is I think overlanding is the only
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: experience that can give you that as soon as you
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: start jumping on a plane from one international airport to another,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: you know you could land and anyone, if you know,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: went in blindfolded and you didn't see the signs up
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: with where you'd landed. You could be anywhere. They all
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: look the same, they all taste the same. It's all
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: the interesting stuff that you'd have missed in the middle.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: Jump on two wheels or get inside four wheels and
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: just go and find it. And I cannot recommend it enough.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: If my game plan eventually Lisa has had enough of
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: me and kicks me out, I'm just going to get
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: a truck and head east.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: To start going.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Mac, thank you so much for you No
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: my pleasure. I have been a long admirer of the
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: work that you do. You've given back so much to
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: the community. The expeditions that you've conducted are some of
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: the most notable in the history of overlanding, and it's
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: just a very rare joy to sit down and spend
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: time with someone of your professionalism and caliber. So Mac,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for not only doing the interview
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: with me, but let me stay here at your beautiful
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: no absolutely my pleasure, beautiful home anytime.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: Much much appreciated. Thank you, Scott, thank you, and we
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: thank you all
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: For listening, and we'll talk to you next time.