26 days and counting

26 days until the start of the race - unfortunately its more like 23 days until Fruit leaves to drive to Spain ....

We started the new car, for now lovingly termed the 'Duck' (for reasons which may become apparent) in September 2008, when we got a Land Rover Discovery to act as the base vehicle. We then went away for a month to Libya in the Rat, which we had rapidly converted from desert racer to desert camper, on the Libya Rally Raid pre-tour (http://www.libya-rally-raid.org/-raid.org/). So nothing much happened until November.





After a bit of a incident in our last Tuareg, when we unexpectedly ended up upside down, we decided that an integral roll cage would be a really good idea and so with some egging on from BD and Paul Round at Rally Raid International 'the Duck' was born.

Fruit, while undetered by most things, doesn't actually know a great deal about cars (other than how to drive one) so he is on a steep learning curve. The Duck is currently being wired and the lights were switched on for the first time yesterday.

We have taken the rally seats from the Rat, but Fruit may be looking at a new one as it is a bit of a squeeze in the cab and, lets face it, any excuse for shopping (it's not a female preserve you know - its just that blokes buy different things).

A month to go

Welcome to the Rally Raiders Blog. A month today (inshallah) March 23rd, we will have finished day 1 of the Tuareg rally in Morocco (http://www.tuareg-rallye.com/).

We have a number - 252 - trouble is we don't yet have a car..!

We are Up and Under rally team (aka Fruit, Lorna and others) and this will be our second Tuareg. The first time, two years ago, saw us zipping through the desert in a 10 year old Land Rover Defender (lovingly known as the Rat).

This time we thought we would go for something designed for the job, with an integral roll cage and all that sort of stuff. Although the Rat had a roll cage it was a bit of an after thought and when given a thorough testing proved to be OK but only just.

Fruit is busy (very) building the new car, with help from Rally Raid International (Dakar veterans) but as you can see it looks as if will go right down to the wire.