At the end of June I flew home to Yorkshire in northern England with no real picture of how life would be. COVID of course is embarrassingly prevalent in the UK and the government has successfully bungled and mismanaged the social circumstances for the British people so nobody is really sure how to approach the… Read More Summer in the UK with COVID chaos

A strange time for the world – “unprecedented” gets used a lot at the mo – and its true. At least two of my friends have this COVID 19 wretch, one in China and one in the UK, and the ructions it causes globally are evident – less so are the ones it will continue… Read More Strange time for all…

My friend Mark Woodward is setting up Classic Safaris, a self drive safari company which uses Series 1, 2 and 3 Land Rovers to explore the northern deserts of the UAE. I’ve become informally involved as a safety car / desert mapper / beer tester and this last couple of weeks he’s been setting things… Read More “Classic Safaris” in Umm Al Qawain

I’m lucky enough to have the friendship of Mark Woodward, a Rhodesian living in Dubai, and, through him, that of Khalifa Al-Ghafli, an Emirati who lives in Umm Al Qawain. Khalifa has an enviable collection of over 100 Land Rovers, ranging from Series Ones to Defenders, with all kinds of variants within – including two… Read More To the desert with Series Twos

So I’ve finally grown up, and bought a ‘proper’ Land Rover. It’s all very well overlanding with a turbodiesel, GPS, coil springs and cupholders, but after I travelled with Ben Stowe and his 1949 80” through Europe and up into the Italian Alps, with the roof down and the doors taken off, I knew there… Read More 1956 Series One 107″ pickup – The Black Pearl

The Camel Trophy was an annual automotive sporting event that ran from 1980 to 2000. A cross between an expedition and a rally, it took place in some of the toughest terrains around the world – from the frozen lands of Siberia to the jungles of the Amazon. Sponsored by Camel cigarettes, the first Camel… Read More 1996 Camel Trophy Edition Discovery – Bumblebee

The Discovery was the vehicle that saved Land Rover, but also changed it forever. The marque began as a maker of purely utility vehicles for a reconstructing post-war Britain, and the original “Land Rover” established a reputation as a tough go-anywhere workhorse for farms around her native islands but also explorers, travellers and soldiers in… Read More 2001 Discovery 2 tdi – Tusker

As my project to stretch my Defender 110 “Elsa” progressed, it became clear that I’d have enough bits left over to make another vehicle. Elsa was stretched by taking my existing 110 Hardtop and combining it with parts from a donor 130 crewcab. So logically there would be plenty of stuff left in the mix… Read More 110 Soft top project – Nightingale

So for over a year, along with Ben Stowe at Black Paw 4×4 in York, I’ve been developing and working on the rebuild and refit of my faithful old 1991 ex-Army 110 “Elsa”, now 400,000 miles old and a veteran of African and European overland trips (as well as the war in Kosovo!) She started… Read More 130 stretch project – Elsa

In October I was lucky enough to visit Lebanon again – one of my favourite places in the world. For me, it combines the best parts of the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe, a land rich with history and culture (it is, after all, ancient Phoenicia) and with a progressive, friendly and welcoming population. This… Read More Lebanon