Bill Frain-Bell has just returned from the gruelling Africa Race to Dakar, better known of old as the ‘Paris Dakar Rally’. Bill was Team Bowler’s co-pilot navigator over the 6500 km race from Monaco to the legendary Lac Rose in Dakar. Over 100 competitors from all over the world, in cars, lorries, buggies and motorbikes left the harbour in Monaco on 30 December last year. Following 36 hours on a ferry to Nador in northern Morocco, the race headed south, across the Atlas Mountains, through Morocco and into the Western Sahara, before crossing Mauritania and finally arriving in Dakar, the capital of Senegal in mid-January. Bill and his driver, fellow Scot, Andrew Wicklow, were the only UK car team and were supported by a team of mechanics from Bowler Motorsports in Belper who built the Bowler Land Rover that they were driving: “built by the English and driven by the Scots” became a popular mantra. The support team who left Belper on Boxing Day, accompanied the race all the way to Dakar in a 6 wheel drive Tatra lorry that managed a heady 2 miles to the gallon!
The average daily distance was around 500 km through desert, rock and across mountainous sand dunes, the longest of which being 85 km. As Bill said, “it was like driving from Edinburgh to London every day for 2 weeks over sand and rocks, often without any markers to reassure you that you were going in the right direction. The trickiest times were navigating at night with only a compass and a distance counter, knowing that one wrong turn would mean a night alone in sub-zero desert conditions in inhospitable territory. One of the more “mind focussing” navigational exercises was plotting a route through the minefield that is the no-man’s land between Western Sahara and Mauritania”.
Despite being beset by a series of mechanical and electrical failures (caused by excessive amounts of sand), Team Bowler were second in the Open Car category. It was a real team effort, Bill said: “whilst we slept in our tents beside our support lorry, the mechanics would rebuild the car during the night in order for it to be ready for the next day. The main enemies were dehydration and lack of energy caused by limited food supplies. Digging a two ton Land Rover out of a sand dune whilst wearing a fireproof race suit, thermals and a helmet is not something to be wished for on a hot day in the UK, let alone in the searing Saharan desert daytime temperatures”.
The race was also about helping the communities that it passed on the way to Dakar and the support trucks delivered hundreds of solar lamps to schools throughout Mauritania and Senegal. “It was a truly remarkable experience, perhaps best summed up by the words of Frenchman Thierry Sabine, organiser of the first Paris Dakar rally in 1978, who described it as, “a challenge for those who dare, and the dream for those who stay.””
