Ibrakeforcake is a collective dedicated to the outdoors, the destruction of apathy and the consumption of cake. Their activities include motor-sport, hiking, rock-climbing, surfing and extreme cycling. Two members of this collective, Chris Lawler and Dave Branfield entered the 2007 Plymouth-Banjul Challenge, with an Isuzu Trooper. Chris is a development engineer with previous experience in automotive mechanics and motor-sport, and Dave is a design graduate now working as a studio and freelance photographer. They decided to help Pageant's activities in The Gambia, particularly in Sinchu Baliya.

The updates are based on emails from the team, and postings on the Ibrakeforcake blog, and are mostly published as received, with very little editing.

The pictures - Most of the pictures were taken by Dave Branfield, and are his copyright.

Preparations

Ibrakeforcake get their car - Update 19 June 2006 by Dave Branfield   

Well the deed is done, we have a car!!! Saturday was quite an action packed day for Chris and I, travelling up to Nuneaton to see a possibly suitable car, owned by Uli, an interesting sounding German chap. After the usual getting lost trying to read 'streetmap' printouts, we arrived to see a blue LHD Isuzu Trooper parked up on the side of the road and it all felt alarmingly real all of a sudden!

Uli turned out to be a really nice guy who was thoroughly interested in what we were planning on doing, himself being a bit of a vehicle bodger/traveller (having welded an engine to a pushbike in Cairo and then driven it back to Germany, then to the UK!). There were various things wrong with the vehicle, which you'd expect from an 18 year old car, but nothing major. After a good look over and spin round the block which highlighted just how bad the brake pull was (under hard braking, apply lock to 10 O'clock or so, to counter a sticky front calliper!), we were quite satisfied that it had the potential to get us there in one piece. Down to negotiations! Uli very kindly agreed to throw in the workshop manual as a present, brilliant news, even if it is in German, as those puppies cost serious bucks! After a bit of haggling we settled on £500 which included the Tax until December and as the MOT is good until then too, it was a bargain!

Chris drove the beast back down to Steph and my house near Buckingham, before loading up with bikes for Sundays' ride and then headed off to see Rich at Vegantune Motorsport in London (Chris' previous place of work), for the official look-over and some priceless info on desert mods and driving tips. This was my first real experience of driving a left hooker and predictably I reached for the door handle a few times whilst changing gear - generally I was impressed with the high position and how solid it felt. Having driven down to Kingston and out to Bracknell on Sunday, driving back to Buckingham afterwards, the car experienced no more problems, so all is good, with work beginning in earnest in a few weeks time.

Well the blagging and borrowing has already begun. I received the first bit of free stuff for the car, kindly donated by my next-door neighbour Malcom, who works for the PR side of Renault F1 and was probably wondering what the hulking great piece of scrap metal was outside the house! Anyway, he passed on a bottle of Motor Max super coolant, that he'd received as a gift from their rep. Lovely! Also on the cards is a borrowed GPS from my soon to be brother-in-law, Guy...

I now feel as if we've really got things rolling and have realised the extent of what is to come! Thanks again to Pippa and Ian's kind hospitality - the pizza was lovely!

Those that know me will already know of my illustrious career of cars (starting with a mini, when I was 16, which I bought for £70 and proceeded to take apart, never to re-build!). It is therefore with a little tear in my eye that I finally got rid of the Cavalier, donated by my Grandpa when I was at University and sat on my parents' drive for two years after buying the thoroughly sensible Volvo! However, all is not lost... Not only did I have it scrapped for free, but I also managed to salvage some rather useful bits to transfer to the Trooper! I pulled out the front seats as they're just in perfect nick and I couldn't chuck them (not sure if we can make them fit, yet!), but most importantly we now have a booming, desert flattening, Essex-style sound system, with my old 6x9s and head unit! Much jiggery-pokery involved in sussing out the home-made wiring that Uli has put in, but it all works and you can hear it outside the car, so all the kids will look us. Sorted. Have also discovered that the tail light problem was not as simple as first thought as it lies somewhere in the loom, which in some places sits outside the shell and is exposed to the elements!

Dave: After finishing work on Friday night, Steph and I bundled our camping gear into the car and set off for the 'official' launch party for the rally, being held in a field in Devon! It was soon established that we'd not brought a map, but hey, who needs maps?! On arriving in Collumpton we discovered, unbelievably, that the local supermarket was shut (it was 10pm), there were no off-licences and we had no beer! However, this soon faded into insignificance as Chris had arrived early and bumped into some fellow Group 1 Swiss boys who'd flown over from Zurich. Being Swiss, they were on the case and far more organised than us, sporting a homemade table, a digital pen-knife and most importantly, a big bottle of Pimms, lemonade and all the correct fruit! This set the scene nicely and we started to put up our tent and say hello to the people that had already arrived.

Chris: Friday night continued with groups of people arriving up until fairly late, my recollection starts to get a little hazy from here on in inverse proportion to the amount of Devon scrumpy. The next thing I'm completely sure about is Saturday morning, whiled away in Exeter generally blundering about. Most importantly we replenished the stock of alcohol and ate brekkie in Woolworths.

General discussion was being had about a sociably acceptable hour to resume drinking when someone wandered past the tent about 12.30 with a can of Fosters which we unanimously decided was a good enough excuse to crack the bar open. With about 8 litres of Number 1 on offer, I think we managed to greet most people in Group 1 with a complementary glass and ended up with a big ole group of people hanging around for the Group 1 leadership 'election'. We modelled the democratic process directly on Monty Pythons Life of Brian, blessed are the meek, blessed be the Pimms, follow the Holy Sheesha etc etc. Seeing as we didn't have anyone called Roger or Roderrick we appeared to decide Fionna was now our leader mainly thanks to her son handing her an important looking file at an opportune moment, nice one Harry.

Webmaster's comment - Ibrakeforcake and IceCold teams were obviously at the same launch party. It is interesting to compare their descriptions of the event. see IceCold description

Chris and I would like to say a big thank you to Gav Wren at Blue Dot Display for supporting team IBFC in the sticker department. I went to Uni with Gav and recently badgered him for some graphics sponsorship for the car. Luckily for us, he's a top bloke and has agreed to supply the stickers for the techni-coloured visual assault that will be the Trooper, in a few weeks time once she's re-painted... Once again, many thanks and please visit the company at the URL above.

On the way back from the launch party, still feeling slightly funky, I stopped in at Pippa and Ian's for their 'Meet Omar day'. They had some of their members round and were keen for me to talk to people about the Banjul Challenge. I spoke to Omar about his visit to the Edison supported schools which he genuinely enjoyed, being pleasantly surprised by the level of interest and questions that the pupils had for him. Thanks to Jonathon Miller at Edison for organising what sounded like a pretty packed day for Omar.

I also met Kemo, Pageant's representative in Gambia and spoke to him for a while about the kind of things that Pageant are doing and he was really keen to show Dave and myself round when we're in Gambia. We also have his number in case of logistical hiccups at the Senegalese/Gambian Border.

At some point soon we'll be publishing lists of car related equipment that we are looking to 'acquire' before we leave, and which will be auctioned off with the vehicle, and also a breakdown of our costs and donations. However as an item that is highly prized in Gambia and is easy to transport, we're looking for old mobile phones, those bricks you've got sitting in a drawer somewhere 'just in case'. We want them! Chargers would be good but it's not essential. Solar panels are also really high on the wish list, not that anyone is going to have any lying around, but a contact would be useful if anyone's parents relatives or partners etc have any connection with the industry.

One of the Pageant members, a German lady whose name has unfortunately escaped me due almost entirely to a complete lack of sleep Saturday night, has raised the possibility of a GPS unit and possibly satellite phone donation from the company she works for, which would be seriously helpful.

Read more about the Meet Omar day.

Things have got moving again on the car front after a summer of flying around on our bikes and it is being de-decalled and prepped ready for paint. Many thanks to Frank at Brewers paint store in MK who has kindly donated the paint for the beast and Darren my Director of Photography who has allowed us the use of one of our studio warehousing units to paint her up in... More photos to come after the weekend.

Filthy blondie, Gav Wren is also on the case with the first set of vinyl stickers to adorn the Trooper in its new livery. Many thanks to him too, as he is in the process of setting up a new graphics company of his own and is rushed off his feet. Knowing Gav, It'll be a successful venture too. Good luck mate!

Dave and myself have been up to Vegantune to give the Trooper the visual once over and get a handle on what's hot and what's not before I have some time off in the week beginning the 16th October to actually carry out the work proper. Thanks to Gary, now next door to Vegantune at Wild Horses Racing, for some appliance of pry bar and a vast amount of experience where necessary.

I am now on the look out for a local motor factor who might be willing to help us out with some if not all of the parts we need including a roof rack. Next up, pilfering visit to the local scrappy to look for interesting bits, mainly spot lamps.

Regular readers of the Ibrakeforcake blog will know that I partially dislocated my knee while climbing at the end of September. I have just been told that I have torn the meniscus cartilage, and may need keyhole surgery. This is obviously inconvenient with just 9 weeks to go before blast off. Anyone who wants the full gory details should check the Ibrakeforcake blog.

On the up side, Chris is embedded and making a nuisance of himself at Vegantune and should be doing some updates on the car fixing scenario. The 'One Woman Army' that is my mother, has started fundraising for us with typical gusto and an early report states that £20 has been raised so far at her end. Watch out good people of Wormingford and Colchester! Thanks Mum, we are now looking at a £65 total and I haven't started properly yet for obvious reasons!

Chris Lawler has put a whole lot of technical stuff on the Ibrakeforcake blog, about the week he spent at Vegantune working on the Trooper. Click this link to read the whole thing. Work was carried out on the brakes, front hubs, front lower ball joint, rear diff/propshaft and the engine. Chris estimates that the total cost including parts, labour and VAT would have been £3795, but thanks to Vegantune, Crazy Horses Racing and Simon at Jet and Helicopter he came away having spent just £38.

Chris and Dave have had further discussions about the Trooper's differential which makes some grumbling clunky noises when during turns. Vegantune's advice was that old diffs clunk, particularly if the wheels/tyres are different from the standard size. Hopefully they won't find out the answer in the middle of the Sahara. Anyone out there with experience of clunking diffs please get in touch.  Click this link to read the full post on the Ibrakeforcake blog.

On the left below, Ed the Croc is admiring one of the stickers from Crazy Horses Racing, who helped enormously with the major refit to the car.

Ibrakeforcake now own a sparkling, shiny galvanised steel roof rack VERY kindly donated by Richard Grant, a freelance set builder/model maker. Rich is a top bloke and very good at all sorts of carpentry and building projects and film work. See his website

Dave reports: "Financial sponsorship is finally kicking into action with Chris and I taking around £250 each from our work/friends/small children that we held upside down and shook... Our parents have been roped in, in various ways to raise money/kit too. Well done them. Other important news is that Steph is making us a Crimbo cake to take away and eat in a carpark in Morrocco somewhere. Lovely. We still have car seats, camping stuff and roof rack to sort, various bits of outstanding paperwork, Oh, and the route to plan! Chris will be doing a tour of Edison Schools next Friday and then it really will be pack up and go..."

Me and Davros the 'no longer unready' finally got round to forming what could be passed as something approaching a plan at the weekend.

We've sorted out our travels day by day until Agadir in Southern Morocco, after that we're governed by making the Mauritanian border in time to meet up with everyone and head off into the dessert. All of the following is completely subject to change depending how we get on and how badly we get distracted by cool stuff on route! having said that our itinerary so far looks something like this:

• Sunday 17th Brighton to Hyde Park to Calais to Bergerac !!!

• Monday 18th Arrive Bergerac and recover!!

• Tuesday 19th Leave Bergerac over the Pyrenees to somewhere in Northern Spain near Zaragoza, stopping when we've had enough

• Wednesday 20th Zaragoza to Madrid and a night in an Ibis hotel and city shenanigans

• Thursday 21st Leave Madrid, arrive Gibraltar to claim our pre-booked accommodation and meet up with the rest of the teams

• Friday 22nd Recover from Thursday and general R&R day

• Saturday 23rd Leave Gibraltar by ferry for Morocco, not expecting to get far by the time we've negotiated out first African border. Stopping around Fes when we've had enough or find somewhere interesting to stay.

• Christmas eve 24th Arrive Marrakech for two days with few other teams

• Christmas day 25th Day in Marrakech doing touristy stuff

• Boxing day 26th Leave Marakech for Agadir via the Tiz n Test mountain pass stay in Agadir

• Wednesday 27th Leave Agadir into the dessert, still on road, to Daklar

• Thursday 28th Daklar to Nouadibou to re-group pre desert operation

• Friday 29th Into the desert for real.

From this point on all bets are off and, although we pretty much are anyway, we'll be taking each day as it comes. We still need to make a certain amount of progress each day but it's such an unknown we're not bothering to plan on being anywhere at any given time in between the various towns and borders. Will try and get some Google earth links to some of the desert way points or similar.

It's the last week before departure, and Chris, Dave, Ed and the car are almost ready to go. They have raised nearly £3000 in donations and sponsorship, but at this point getting to The Gambia is more important than accurate accounts. They will be stopping by at Ian and Pippa's before they go on Sunday 17 December, to pick up some educational resources, which they will be taking out to Sinchu Baliya. 

The Journey

Chris and Dave (plus Ed) dropped by at Ian and Pippa's house on Saturday 16 December to pick up educational supplies for Sinchu Baliya. They are now on their way to The Gambia, and they will try to post daily updates on their blog. We will copy these onto this page as quickly as possible.

An early start for the friends and family of our intrepid Ibrakeforcake rally team as we gathered on an amazing Winters Morning in Hyde Park.

In typical Gav style I had a phone with no charge but had had the foresight before the previous evenings drinks to formulate some sort of plan! Off we trotted to find both Monsieur Lawler and Senor Branfield looking surprisingly chirpy and excitable as you would be knowing or maybe not knowing what the next three weeks were all about!

Our first update from the boys in France! Following a drive all through the night, Chris and Dave rocked up in Bergerac [map] at 8am, to stay with Chris's friend Ian who happens to own a lovely barn, (available to hire) and get a well earned rest after driving 20 hours of the first 24 of the rally!

Off to the ferry for 3:30pm and we were feeling quite sorted at this point and following Via Michelin directions were steaming south. It all started to go wrong about 2am when the fog set in. May I just say that it was FOG not just wispy UK fog and we were in it for around the next six hours! The 15ft of visibility meant that you had to stay 100% concentrated all the time which was increasingly hard the more tired you were. After a brief nap at 3am, things really started to go crazy at about 4am when the gearbox started to make a catching, intermittent whining sound in fifth gear. Bugger. This continued and coupled with our tiredness, started to make us go completely paranoid and we narrowed it down to main drive bearing or one of the gearbox bearings/cogs/synchromesh/dog clutch... Anyway, we pulled over and checked the transmission oil level. Fine. Went 100m and then checked the engine oil level - not much. We topped up the engine oil, I stood in the oil and covered my shoes, then got in to drive and realised that I couldn't operate the pedals as I was slipping off! Doh! Drove in sock for an hour whilst Chris wiped my shoe clean. By now complete exhaustion, the Limoges effect (when Limoges is signposted as 20km for what seems like three hours without getting any closer) and complete runaway paranoia about the gearbox meant we were gibbering wrecks, with one driving, the other pointing out useful facts like bends in the road and that you've got your wipers on full blast in dry air... We arrived at 8am and let ourselves in and both couldn't wind down enough to sleep for half an hour...

Chris adds:

Alarm woke the pair of us at 11 despite wishing we could sleep for about another day. Personally it took me about 2 hours and a shower before I was anywhere operating at full capacity. Lunch lunched and we drove up to see a mechanic Ian knows, turned out he'd had more than his fair share of prepping 4x4s for the desert. Having arched his eyebrows at the wagon he offered to try and track down another gearbox tomorrow, loosen all the retaining bolts and show us how the box would come out should the need arise.

Having gotten totally covered in gear oil, we have refilled the Trooper's gearbox and are planning to leave Bergerac at about 12.30pm, about 3 hours behind our schedule. AA European Cover has been purchased and we are taking an easier route over the Pyrenees. Hopefully we'll be in touch tonight to say we made Spain!!

The guys arrived safely in Madrid [map] last night after a long drive through Spain and a night sleeping in the car. A little game of football to relax in which Dave managed to hurt his shoulder. Fantastic scenery of which I'm sure senor Branfield will be taking lots of proper photos of which we will upload and publish on their return from Da Gambia, innit.

You can see pictures of the route through Morocco, taken last year by Team Shap Ahoy, on this page.

Got a very quick but informative call this morning. They had left Laayoune [map] and headed into the Western Sahara travelling with two Australian bikers. They are stopped fairly regularly by military check points but all is well and they've had no problems with the locals! The car started rattling and they had got sand in the air inlet, so with a pair of tights securely in place they were off again and are now heading towards Dakhla [map] only a few miles north of the Tropic of Cancer. The weather has got hot and even at night it's mild (not that they know as it seems the lure of hotels is winning over the camping plans!).

We have emerged from our 150-mile, 5-day trek across the Sahara desert! We're now in Senegal and expect to arrive in Banjul by Saturday/Sunday. Our dodgy gearbox held out in the tough conditions, but we have to do running repairs on the fuel pump. Some great news: British Oxygen have agreed to match all donations we receive from other donors, so please give something towards our target of £4,000. Your contribution will be worth double!

Ibrakeforcake visited Sinchu Baliya LBS, and were welcomed by the staff and children. They were accompanied by Pageant's agents Kemo and Alimatou.

We have arrived home, a little more smelly, tired and weary. Lots of piccies and stories to tell which will go up on the blog when they're sorted! (keep your eyes on the blog!) Thanks to everyone who helped us get the car and equipment ready for The Gambia and the people who sponsored us to get the car there.

The third charity auction of 18 vehicles was held at the Safari Garden Hotel, Banjul on 28 January, and raised over £15,000. (see full auction results) Ibrakeforcake's Isuzu Trooper sold for 39,000 Dalasis (about £700).

The Plymouth-Banjul Challenge started in 2003 as an ironic tribute to the Paris-Dakar Rally. Instead of highly expensive cars driven by world class rally drivers, with large back-up teams, this challenge consists of small teams on strictly limited budgets, and at the end of the challenge, the cars are auctioned for the benefit of local good causes. For further information, and news of other teams, see our 2007 Challenge Page.