Ixopo

Now in possession of our trusty transport we headed South West to Ixopo where we would stay with Simon’s friends and make any last adjustments to the vehicle.

 We reattached the ladder and tents that had been moved to fit Betty into the container.  A few other adjustments, the sponsors stickers attached, and Betty was  ready to go.  We set off for the Student Partnership Worldwide offices at East London.

London to Durban

Simon and Hannah left in middle September, to go to friends at Ixopo where we would finalise our preparations.  We left London a week later, and met up with friends we had made over the internet, who lived north of Durban and who had offered accomodation until we were ready to leave with Betty.

Betty arrived about a week after the expected date, but she was offloaded safely and the four of us took delivery of her and headed for Ixopo where we would do the final preparations.

September 2007

With Betty gone our attention has now turned to paperwork and documentation. As far as we can tell we have done everything we can do from this end and the team is flying out at the end of September.

August 2007

We put Betty through a major service with a couple of replacement parts and some more mechanical tuition for the team. We also streached her legs driving down to the new forrest and tested out the tents and other equipment with a couple of days camping.

Work started on the electrical modifications which took longer than expected but left an impressive looking array of switches and buttons.

Finally on August the 31st we took her to the dock where she was loaded into a cramped container, her new home for the next month while she gets shiped down to Durban.

July 2007

We have most of the kit we need and have started work on preparing the land rover. To get both the tents on we needed to modify the roof rack but both the tents and the awining are now installed and it only remians to to a bit of carpentry in the back for our storage system and wire in the electrics.

June 2007

We had our first two charity fund raising events, Georgie ran a half marathon in Richmond Park, which raised £300, and we also ran a Pimm's bar and raffle at the Bristol UOTC Summer Ball. Between the two events we past the £1500 mark.

June also saw our first four newspaper articels and fith in DB8 magazine.

May 2007

Landrover got painted

Sponsorship starts comming in

Bit busy with finals...

March 2007

More work on the Landrover prepairing it for painting

Started the endless paperwork

February 2007

Liase with charities

Start looking for sponsors

January 2007

Buy our vehicle and started stripping it down

Route finalised

December 2006

Started compiling kit lists and a budget

November 2006

Route planning and country research

October 2006

Team formed, leave date confirmed as 1st September 2007.