Triumph Dolomite 1300 - What a Car!!!!
So Team Triumph (aka Massive Lads) made it... Africa Rally: DONE!
We set off from Hyde Park on July 18th and arrived in Douala, Cameroon on August... 39 days, 22 countries and 9,996.5 miles later.
The last few days were arguably the most eventful of the trip for us. We left Ghana and continued through Togo, then into Benin where we stopped for the night on a dirt track. Over the duration of the hours that followed, a gang of locals arrived with a cocktail of machetes, pistols and rifles in their possession and demanded money. They were eventually fobbed off with the equivalent of less than £5, a bottle of Fanta and two cigarettes.
This certainly woke us up, and pointed out the fact that our next stop was Nigeria and the fun and games needed to be replaced by seriousness and sensibility. Unfortunately, Oliver couldn't help himself at the Nigerian border when customs enquired if we were carrying any 'arms' - to which he replied - "Yes... two of them!" - the following 5 minutes were then spent trying to explain to the less than amused officer that we didn't actually have any weapons.
So - Nigeria, the penultimate country with fantastically cheap petrol! It wasn't actually particularly eventful - until we reached the last 100km before the Cameroonian border where the Triumph exhaust did its best to get left behind on several occassions, and the air filter fell out of the bottom of the car (meaning a combination of gaffa tape and ingenuity was used as a replacement) - and if there was ever a day to lose an air filter, then this was not the day to do so... As we crossed through no less than 6 rivers - the last of which was over 200metres wide and getting the Dolomite across entailed the help of a dozen locals and their pushing power. Needless to say, it would take more than swimming to stop Dolly and we cracked on. Our first day in Cameroon saw Oliver under the car for the umpteenth time and what looked like a job well done on securing the exhaust- until Dolly decided that swimming was yesterday, and today was a good time to give aviation a whirl as we hit a speedbump at 65mph and proceeded to 'Take Off' - so exhaust fixed once more, then we were back on the road before our biggest test hit us head on.
We'd already spotted that next to the rear right axle, the Triumph chassis had rusted, and was somewhat sagging, meaning it didn't have a huge amount of mileage ahead of it (this Diagnosis had been made in Burkina Faso no less than 11 days prior to what happened next)
Driving down a dirt track in 'The Roon' the chassis snapped in half!
The Dolomite had been warning us, and was slowly falling apart part by part, but this really had us in pieces - surely it couldn't have been the end of the road for the Triumph boys.
...It wasn't!
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With a huge slice of good fortune, the local constabulary were driving past and gave us a lift in the back of their pick up (with their groceries) to the next small village. In broken French, we explained the problem to the local mechanic and before we knew it, we were back at the scene of despair on the back of mopeds. Less than 3 hours later, the locals had performed a small miracle and welded Dolly back together on the side of the road!
Next stop - Kribi...
After the small matter of bribing a policeman outside Yaounde with roughly £11 and a corkscrew (because we apparently weren't insured correctly) and we made Kribi by 2330hrs on Saturday 23rd August! Oh - how the beers did flow!
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So, a couple of days later we headed up to Douala where the Massive Lads showed their sensitive side as they both shed tears as Dolly was sold at auction for 200,000 CFA Francs (somewhere between £250/300)
We were then warned that if we left the grounds of the hotel, we would be mugged... And low and behold, after a very unsuccessful evening at the local casino, those words rang true as we made our way home in the early hours of the morning as a local chap chanced his arm and went for us... Needless to say, he came off a lot worse than us!
Virgin Nigeria flew us home, and here we are - back in the UK... Job done!
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Thank you so much to everyone, especially our Sponsors:
Jenkins Garages, SiteServ Recycling, Felicity, Ogmore Vale Bakery, Celtic Tyres, The Sign Centre, KooGa Rugby AutoSparks and St. Johns School.
And also a huge thanks to everyone who has kindly donated! There's still plenty of time if you haven't - so please log on to
www.WillWeMakeIt.com/TeamTriumph
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