Intrepid for 10 Minutes: The End of an Era

It's amazing how time flies quicker as you get older and this is my first (and in fact last) blog since April 2019.

At that stage we were almost at then end of our last session in South America and as all we did was drive to Colonia, store the vehicle and spend a couple of nights in our regular apartment in Buenos Aires with beers and a steak in our regular haunts. The only thing we hadn't done before was stay overnight at the pencil museum outside Colonia (which had excellent facilities for overlanders).

I did make one more trip, in January 2020 on my own, to put the cruiser in a container bound for Durban, with a view to doing 2 x 3 month sessions in Africa. Two weeks after flying home the whole world went into lockdown and it soon became obvious that it was going to be a long time before the world would get back on its feet.

The cruiser finally arrived in Durban in May, but I had already arranged for it to be shipped back to the UK well before that. However, because it was sharing a container with a Land Rover it had to be unloaded, but we had already arranged for another vehicle to share a container back to the UK.

It finally arrived home in November and we reluctantly decided to sell it this April. Someone spotted the ad whilst looking for a roof tent, suggested his brother have a look at it, so came round to have a look. The brother is a Safari Guide who came over to the UK with his girlfriend to visit her parents (and his brother) just before lockdown and got stuck over here. Turns out they live less than 3 miles away.

I sold the cruiser with all toys, max tracks, compressor, hi lift jack etc. etc. so was exactly what he was looking for, as baring a few odds and sods I advised him of, it was pretty much ready to go. His plan now is to ship it back to Africa, once he has owned it over here for a period of time, so I am really happy that it will continue to be used for what it was prepared for.

I bought the cruiser in Nov 2009 from a dodgy looking dealer in Sheffield who had 3 at the time. After a test drive round the block I new it was the vehicle that would take me around the world, spent the next few months upgrading and converting it, before trips to Morocco, Mongolia and end to end (and round and round) North, Central and South America. Seen some amazing places, come across some incredible animals and met some wonderful people

Over 11 years we have completed 104,000 miles in 1,145 days and slept in the roof tent over 900 nights.

It would have been more if we had gone to Africa, but I decided some time ago that we would pack up this sort of travel by the time I was 70 and that is just a few short months away.

It has not stopped us traveling, we have sold the cruiser, the camper and a small house we have had since 2002 in the Spanish mountains and bought an almost new motorhome. We have also taken on a rescue dog from Cypress during lock down and she will now be accompany us on all of our adventures.

The first will be to Scotland for 6 or 7 weeks and next year to Europe (and possibly a little beyond) but there are still lots of places in Europe to explore, but unfortunately all on proper roads now.

I don't think that Intrepid for 10 minutes is the right web site for Motorhome travel so this is the last post for this blog. However I do have another blog 'A Beer in the Sun.com' which I think more appropriate. I originally set this up to record cycle trips, but although I did many I never got round to documenting them, so it fell by the wayside. But it is a good way of documenting our trips, so hopefully I will get back in the habit for the Motorhome.

OK, I have said it so now I will have to do it!