Paul, James and Alex are taking part in the Mongol Rally, an adventure to Mongolia in a 1-litre Nissan Micra, raising money for Multiple Sclerosis Society UK.

 

Hello, and welcome to our team blog. On Saturday 18th May we will be leaving the safe arms of Kendal, and departing to the wilderness that is the Mongolian desert. Along the way we’ll be updating this blog periodically with what we’ve been up to and what we have planned ahead.

It’s feels like longer ago than September when we signed up for the Rally – with so much to do, time has flown by in a flurry of fundraising and bureaucratic red tape. As the first blog post before we leave, we’ll take some time to tell you all what we’ve been doing since our last feature in the Gazette.

The car Christened Roxanne (not after the song!), our reliable little runner has undergone a few drastic changes. For a start we’ve taken an old Land Rover roof rack and, with a little technical know-how from James, welded together a fine roof rack, complete with rally lamps, to keep all our gear on the trip.

But we know Mongolia presents bigger problems than inconvenient storage. With no tarmac, your off-the-line Nissan Micra is not typically suited to the rocky trails we need to navigate. So, following a fundraising event at the Westmorland Shopping Centre over the Easter period, we were contacted by Stagecoach in Kendal to perform some vehicle modifications to help us on our way.

We gladly capitalised and Roxanne now has a tray for our (definitely professional) roof rack, a sump guard to protect the underside of the engine, two sand ladders (for those moments when one of us gets the car stuck somewhere stupid) and a deflector for the rally lamps. It’s the touches like this which really help a tiny tin can get to Mongolia, and who knows where we’d be without their help.

Living One of the questions we get asked when we tell people about the Rally is “but where will you sleep??”. There was once a time where we’d reply ‘hostel’; however, with funding always an issue, we accepted that we’d need to camp more often than not for the duration of the trip.

To source our camping gear, we contacted Kendal Camping, who helped us by providing us with all manner of equipment, from a tent right the way through to sleeping bags and a fire extinguisher (we’ll let you be the judge on whether we need that).

With a petrol stove, pots & pans and enough survival food for a crack SAS team, we’re hoping to keep our morale high on the road.

Other funding Away from the critical parts of the adventure, we’ve needed to source funding to pay for visas and fuel. With a projected spend of £1500 in fuel and £2000 in visas, we teamed up with Majik house and Kendal Caravans, both of Kendal, and our nationwide partner SmithYoung. Funding has been absolutely critical to our adventure and it’s fair to say that without it we wouldn’t be going, so we’d like to take this moment to say a big thanks to those guys.

Charity work It’s important to remember that this trip isn’t just about exploring the world; it’s also about helping a great cause.

We’ve been raising money for Multiple Sclerosis Society UK with both public donations and fundraising events at Asda, The Westmorland Shopping centre and up at Kendal Caravans– with some family links to the disease, it’s something we’re all passionate about raising money for.

Considering both our online donations and donations we’ve made directly to the charity from fundraising events, we’ve raised over £3000 for the charity.

See you next week That’s it for now – we’ll hopefully be able to bring you a final image of what the car looks like next week after Roxanne’s been stickered up with a few final touches. We’ll keep our plans under wraps to keep you hooked!

We’ll bring another update to this blog before we go, so keep your eyes on the Gazette website and Facebook page!

See you next week, The Team