http://www.CareerBreak360.com
Duncan from tour de
Force Adventure Travel, is an adventure travel addict, proved by him travelling round the world for 5 years as an overland driver. Duncan takes adventure travel to a whole new height, which includes taking a flying car across the
Sahara to
Timbuktu or a classic car rally's from
Beijing to
Paris. His most memorable trips have been with The Adventurists. Who else would drive a fur covered
Bedford van to
Cameroon or terrible
Chinese motorbikes across the mountains, jungles and deserts of
Peru? You couldn't' make up half of the stories Duncan tells. This is the stuff
Top Gear only dream of.
Transcript
Duncan Milligan from '
Tour De Force' speaking at the
Adventure travel show.
The first job I did; obviously, was to take a flying car to Timbuktu.
It's obvious isn't it. It's the first gig you're going to get, which was an amazing experience. And this is what made me think we were onto something, is that I saw an article in the newspaper about it, and they were flying to Timbuktu , and I thought hang on a second,
I've travelled through the Sahara, I've been to Timbuktu five or six times, maybe this might be useful to them, so I fired off a little bit of an email, like an hour later I got a phone call 'yes, when can we meet', and it was like, ok this knowledge is going to be useful to some people, and so the long story short, we took a flying car to Timbuktu, and it really did fly, it's based upon
Para motor technology which is basically a parachute normally, that and someone with a lawnmower engine on their back and this engine powers them into the air and this completely mad scientist
Gilo built this incredible machine; and it was led by Neil Laugton, ex
SAS proper adventurer. And we disappeared off across the
Sahara desert having amazing adventures, and believe it or not we actually made it to Timbuktu. It was an incredible adventure.
Some of you might of heard of 'The Adventurists', how many here, just a quick show of hands.
The future of travel as far as I'm concerned. The Adventurists are brilliant. If you haven't had a look; go have a look at their website. The idea is the world is way to safe now, health and safety's gone mad, you cannot have a proper adventure anymore, that you are taken somewhere, your hand will be held and there's backup and there's support, basically people like me around to make sure you'll get to where you need to go. And for some people that's great, that's what they want. But, for The Adventurists set up by Mr Tom ten years ago, was a drunken idea in the pub, where they thought 'what's the stupidest thing that we can come up with, how can we have a proper adventure?. And they decided the best thing to do was try and drive a
Fiat Panda from the UK to
Ulaanbaatar, so they gave it a go. They didn't get there but they had a brilliant time in the process. The next year they tried again and they had three mates that came with them and three cars. This year will be the tenth year anniversary, 350 teams battling across the
Mongolian steppe in the crappest cars you've ever seen, with no backup, no routes, no maps, no preparation; or as much or little preparation as you like. The
point being, and I heartily agree with this, it's when you get lost, it's when you break down, it's when things go wrong, that you have the adventure, and actually if you make it to Ulaanbaatar you've almost failed. You shouldn't make it. And people take all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
So I organised one to
Africa. They wanted to do one down to Cameroon. And the idea is each team has to raise money for charity. I think they've raised over £4 ½ million now with the various adventures they do all over the world and they came to me and said 'right we want to do one in Africa; can you help', and I thought this sounded like a great laugh. And before I knew it I ended up dressed as
The Stig driving round in the top gear test track in an
Austin seven with various other ridiculous cars in tow behind about to set off across Africa, across the Sahara desert to get to Cameroon where we then sold the cars, we set up an auction and we sold the cars to charity and we also put on a music festival down there. It was an amazing experience. But, this is what I love about it. These guys came in fur covered Bedford
Rascals, they bought a
Chesterfield sofa with them and they dressed in tweed. It's just that brilliant
British eccentricity, if so you haven't looked at The Adventurists website; I highly recommend that you do.
And I found myself in ridiculous situations. Now whenever I find myself going 'how did I get here' and sort of pinching myself, this is one of them, this is me, we organised a
parade through Limbe town
...
This video was filmed at the Adventure Travel
Show 2012 by
Career Break 360
http://youtu.be/0CZgpqkoxJQ
- published: 08 Sep 2013
- views: 270