The Route
What is the Plymouth to Banjul Challenge?
To quote the official website:
The Challenge is to simply drive the route from Plymouth to Banjul (on a limited budget) with the principle aim of helping some Charitable causes in Senegal and The Gambia. The car must be Left Hand Drive, cost less than £100 and you may only spend £15 preparing it for the journey.
Simple…
OK, perhaps not. We need to drive it just over 3700 miles in 22 days over a mixture of roads, mud, beach, desert and land mines - FUN!
The Route
Here is where we will be when:
| Day | Date | Plan | Risk of Death | Miles Covered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uxbridge - Plymouth, Stopping at the Farley’s for tea | 0 - nice and easy | |||
| Plymouth - Roscoff , Photo shoot and press conference in the morning with Spar | 2 - Possible | |||
| Roscoff - Gibraltar | 3 - Drive through the night on some windy roads | |||
| Gibraltar Rest Day, meet the teams, get some sleep | 1 - Got to watch those monkeys | |||
| Gibraltar - Rabat, Welcome to Africa! | 4 - Gareth’s first attempt at Bible Bribery | |||
| Rabat - Marrakech, See the rock of Kabash | 3 - Marrakech roads | |||
| Marrakech Rest Day, charm a snack, eat a scorpion etc | 4 - Taste the local cuisine | |||
| Marrakech - Agadir, via the Tz-n-Test Pass, some 2000m over the Atlas Mountains | 4 - with our brakes! | |||
| Agadir - Laayoune | 2 - long straight roads | |||
| Laayoune - Dakhla, pass the UN camp and assorted beached ships | 2 - very little to hit here | |||
| Dakhla - Nouâdhibou, chat for hours to the Mauritanian border guards | 4 - if we put Gareth in charge of diplomacy | |||
| Nouâdhibou Rest Day, fix the cars in prep for our desert challenge | 1 - nice and easy | |||
| Desert Day 1, traverse the Mine field & camp at 3rd sand dune on the left after the whale skeleton | 10 - MINEFIELD? | |||
| Desert Day 2, a trip to the sea side | 4 - Saabs not really made for sand | |||
| Beach - Nouakchott, push the cars off the beach and back to Civilisation | 4 - Jon revving it off the sand | |||
| Nouakchott Rest Day, repair the car from those desert injuries | 2 - slips off the excitement of yesterdays pushing | |||
| Nouakchott - St Louis, the worst boarder crossing in the world | 4 - we are using PG-Tips to bribe our way in | |||
| St Louis Rest Day, chase giraffes at the national park | 2 - if we stay away from the lions | |||
| St Louis - Barra, play the customs game | 0 - safe as houses | |||
| Barra - Banjul, hop on the ferry to The Gambia! | 3 - least sea worthy vessel in Africa | |||
| Car Auction, stretch our legs and enjoy the views | 4 - African auctions are pretty rough! | |||
| Banjul - Gatwick, Tearful goodbye to the car before coming home | 8 - We’re flying Poultry class | |||
| Sleep, Sleep and more sleep, oh and wash. | ||||
