William Frain-Bell has just returned from the Sahara having successfully navigated a Saltire emblazoned Bowler Bulldog Land Rover to a top 20 finish in the 10th Morocco Desert Challenge.
Of the 63 cars that lined up at the start on the Atlantic coast in southern Morocco, 44 made it to the finish line 2,400km away on the northern Mediterranean coast. Bill and his driver were the only UK entrants in the car section and were supported by a team of mechanics in a Czech Tatra lorry that had started life as a mobile army missile launcher. Competitors slept beside their vehicles in tents over the course of the race. Map-book navigation, as opposed to GPS made desert navigation tricky to say the least. The terrain included fast tracks, technical sections, vast African plains, the famous Erg Chebbi sand dunes and salt lakes of the legendary Paris-Dakar race.
Bill explained that, “the night before each section we would be issued with the road book for the following day. It was very like being handed papers for an urgent court hearing the night before. Experience as an advocate helped steady the nerves! Preparation for the next day involved marking various hazards, bends, ravines and sand dunes with an array of highlighter pens (orange for very dangerous), in order to direct the Land Rover.” As to life on the road in the desert, Bill explained that it was like being in an upturned snow globe with sand everywhere all the time. “We communicated via radio headsets in our helmets. Digging a Land Rover out of the sand with a small spade wearing a race suit and helmet in 40 degrees at the top of a 200 foot sand dune in the Sahara is an experience never to be forgotten.”
“We would not have managed without the help of our technical team from Bowler Motorsports in Derby who would spend each night fixing the car for the next day. If you can imagine 20 or 30 branches of Kwik Fit suddenly opening for business on the Moon then you have an idea of what our tiny piece of the Sahara would look like at night – complete with arc lights, inquisitive scorpions and the odd thirsty looking camel!”
Asked what his most vivid memory of the rally was, Bill replied that, “the sense of overpowering relief upon realising - in the middle of the Sahara - that you were not lost after all…”
