Overland dreaming

As you may have guessed from the lack of recent updates, we haven’t been able to use Rocky much over the winter, and he is currently off the road having another engine transplant and a few other jobs sorted (hopefully) in time for spring adventures. Therefore I have been travelling vicariously through reading about other peoples’ adventures. I’ve always been a fan of real paper books, but for reasons of availability and immediate need for reading material, I downloaded the kindle app to my nexus 4 phone and read a few eBooks. It was actually fine reading this way, surprisingly, and was handy as I virtually always have my phone with me, and it gave me something to read other than facebook or twitter.

The first one I downloaded was Not in that car, by Roy Locock, the story of his unlikely round the world trip in a 32-year-old MG midget. A very entertaining read and proof that with determination, you can get any unsuitable overland vehicle round the world, even with only a few inches of road clearance.

On the same theme (and bought to my attention by the “you might also like..” feature in the kindle store), I then read Survival of the quickest by Ben Coombs, about his 13,500 trip from England to Cape Town in a Porsche 944. Apart from the numerous mechanical issues dealt with along the way, I was also impressed to see the Porsche fitted with a roof tent!

The last kindle purchase was The Long and Whining Road by Simon Courtie, an entertaining account of a family travelling round the world in their VW T25, busking beatles songs as they went.

Finally, I ordered a real paper book Drive Nacho Drive, the book about another round the world trip in a T25. I’ve blogged about Brad, Sheena and Nacho before – their blog is great, and some of the content is repeated in the book, but it is extremely well written and worth a read even if you already read the blog.

Last but not least, I have been following the adventures of the campervan culture team, travelling through Spain and around Morocco, and am looking forward to the rest of the videos.