About Us

This has to be the hardest section of our website to write. It's relatively easy to tell you what we have been up to and to create a story, but who are we, the people behind the adventure. We could tell you that Greg has a background in Systems and Electronic Engineering, that Emma's is in the area of Town Planning and Landscape Architecture, that we both hold Master's Degrees and have spent the last eight years as company directors managing a brick distribution company in the UK; but what would that tell you about us? It says nothing about the essence of our being. How does one get to that?

Perhaps a little history will provide some clues: We have both always loved the outdoors and the adventures that it has to offer. Indeed we met on a windswept winter beach on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, during a University Canoe Club outing in the surf, back in late 1992. Greg the hero saving Emma from the waves. Since then we've had many adventures together from Kayaking, Climbing and camping in the UK to trekking in the Indian Himalaya, scaling Mount Kenya and mountaineering in southern Alaska. More recently skiing has become a passion. Basically, whatever we get up to in our spare time there is usually a mountain directly involved or close by. Our biggest adventure to date however has been marriage. A snowy peak found its way into the proposal, but the affair itself was quintessentially English and the honeymoon went back to our roots, the sea. We learned to scuba dive off Zanzibar, Tanzania. Now, two years on, we are still constantly looking to challenge ourselves and increase our experience of the world around us.

We have been dreaming about making an extended expedition like this ever since we bought our first Land Rover as students back in 1995. Our opportunity to make our dream a reality came (ironically) with the current economic down turn. We had sold our house just before the bottom fell out of the housing market and our business (supplying building materials).

Our business could survive and jobs could be saved but only if we re-structured, reduced costs, maximised efficiency and achieved the environmental and quality accreditation that our customers were increasingly demanding. Our mission as Directors was therefore to put all of this in place (including a move to new premises) before removing ourselves from the company to further reduce the company's outgoings during this difficult period.

This all took place between August 2008 and January 2009 so after 6 months of long long hours and not many weekends we were left with just eight weeks to prepare for our expedition.

That manic eight weeks were principally taken up with vehicle preparation, visa applications, organising logistics and putting our former lives into storage. Finally we put Bee on a ship bound for the US and flew to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a last blast on the ski slopes as we waited for Bee and pondered what we had got ourselves into...

About Bee

Since we purchased her in December 2008 Bee has become our pride and joy as well as the source of our freedom on this expedition. Built in 2007, Bee is a 2006 Model 'Rest of the World Specification' Land Rover Defender 110 Utility Station Wagon. She has a 300 tdi engine, air conditioning and is left hand drive. When we found her she had been sitting in a warehouse for two years and had just nine kilometers on her clock.

As serial Landy owners the Land Rover Defender was always our expedition vehicle of choice and we particularly wanted to take one with a tdi engine for ease of repair in out of the way places should that become necessary. At first we considered taking an older model due to cost and availability considerations, but after looking at all of the other wear and tear issues that come with an older vehicle, it soon became clear that unless we wanted to spend half of our trip under the car then a new vehicle was the best option..

We had read about 'Rest of the World Spec' vehicles and knew that they were perfect for our needs. All we had to do was find one and then hope that we would be able to make the necessary modifications to get it through a Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) Test at the DVLA so that we could get it registered for use in the UK..

It wasn't easy to find the necessary information, but once we had the technical bits were quite straight forward. Basically all we had to do to Bee was change the kilometer speedo for one that registered miles, swap the reverse and fog lights over on the back and change the head lamps for ones designed for driving on the left instead of on the right. Then it was an afternoon at the test centre followed by a trip to the local DVLA office to get a registration number and tax disk. So Bee was first registered in January 2009 but carries a 2007 (56) licence plate as we didn't have a 'Certificate of Newness'..

This was just the start of Bee's metamorphosis into expedition vehicle extrordinare however. The first job was to source a pair of solid rear side pannels to replace the rear side windows. LR Defender 90" pannels are slightly too long, but the old 88" series version fits perfectly. We found a great straight set for just five pounds. They came with a free roof panel which we re-sold for a tenner so we're quids in there !.

Once we had proved the theory on the side pannels it was off to the body shop for a re-spray. Bee's original colour, as with all ROW Landys was white, but we couldn't live with this, especially with dark blue side pannels. AA yellow was the colour of choice and AA yellow Bee now is, thanks to the excellent job done by Paintology of Nottingham. Bee stands out a mile in the US, where defenders are popular but unavailable, and is a talking point wherever we go..

I think that the only thing I would do differently if I went through the re-spray process again would be to choose some month other than January and make sure I had a heated garage to work in. We stripped Bee under a tarpaulin one very snowy night and re-assembled her, by kind permission of Paintology, in a workshop that wasn't much warmer than our driveway. Still, it was a big improvement on being out in the wind and snow and meant we were able to drive her home, rather than pay for another transporter..

Once we were back home the real expedition preparation began....

We added:.

• A full length 2.8m Patriot roof rack and ladder
• Chequerplate on the bonet and wings
• Rock sliders, tree sliders and bumperettes.
• A winch, A-bar and light guards.
• Bush wires.
• Steering guard and a front diff guard
• New tyres (BF Goodrich All Terrain 265 x 75  R16).
• Heated Windscreen and heated seats
• A compressor
• A slipt charger
  
• An in-line fuel heater to stop the diesel from waxing at low temperatures.
• Water filter and shower.
• Ipod dock, CB radio and various charging stations.
• A cubby box
  
• Lots of extra lights, inside and out.
• Two spare wheels and swing away wheel carrier.
• Lots and lots of security features.
• And the piece de resistance; a fully racked out interior, custom designed and built by ourselves plus various additional security features.

All this happened in just eight weeks !.

With no time to take a shake down trip of any kind before we set off there have been modifications and improvements along the way. Indeed you will have noticed that the roof box has disappeared and been replaced by a canoe. We have also acquired a fridge and the wood burning stove fits perfectly in the space we made for it.