A very warm welcome to our tales of travel in Big Bertha, our overlanding truck.
Having worked in the Middle East and the Far East for the past twenty five years, we have found ourselves in the fortunate position of being able to take a sabbatical and travel the world in our truck.
The idea for this adventure arose from our camping trips to Oman where, on some trips to the Empty Quarter, we could go for days without seeing another person.
Planning started in 2017 and we visited Bad Kissingen in 2018 with a view to placing a truck order for delivery in a couple of years. Two things changed that: the new Malaysian Gov’t cancelled the project Dave was working on and our truck-to-be came up for sale. Dave promptly flew back to the UK, inspected and agreed to purchase the Bocklet 830F from the overlanding family.
We are going to be on the road several years earlier than planned! Luckily, the cost saving over a new truck balanced the books and our budget was still intact (or at least we hope so).
Catch The Wind is the name of a Scottish country dance (a pastime that we both enjoy) and we thought this to be a very appropriate aim for us in BB.
Why a blog? Its to keep friends and family updated of where we are and what we have been doing, because people we meet on the road always ask if we have one, and lastly to provide a record for own posterity. After all, as Alexander McCall Smith said: “A life without stories is no life at all”.
We hope you enjoy it.
Dave and Francine, November 2018
UPDATE
Well, almost six years have passed since we wrote the above! Can you believe it? We took a three month test trip around southern Europe and Morocco, returning to the UK to prepare for Africa. We decided we’d ‘do’ Africa first, because we thought it might be the hardest – and we should go there sooner rather than later. Big Bertha was shipped to Namibia (we didn’t want anything to do with West Africa) and we joined her in July 2019. We spent the next 45 months touring Southern Africa, spending nine months with Dylan in Lusaka over covid. We really enjoyed it.
We shipped Big Bertha from Durban to Zarate, Argentina in March 2023, whilst we returned to UK and France to visit family and friends. We joined Big Bertha in Argentina in July 2023 and have subsequently visited Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. The highlight so far has been our trip from Ushuaia to Antarctica.
We have reached Santiago and from here we will head north via Argentina, to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia before shipping Big Bertha across the Darien Gap to Panama.
Overlanding is not all holiday and we have had our difficulties. We got stuck in mud in a remote part of Zambia for ten days, we’ve spent a lot of time at MAN garages and subsequently had some large bills, and every now and then we get fed up and want to pack it in. But what else would we do?
We did a very comprehensive budget forecast before we started. Could we afford to do this? The numbers back in 2018 said ‘yes’. And Francine’s accounting prowess proved to be accurate – we are under budget.
Our aspiration is to continue to Alaska – after which we will ship Big Bertha to the UK, our trip will probably end and we will settle down…somewhere.
The blog has flourished and we have around four hundred subscribers – it will serve as an excellent reminder of our travels. We hope you enjoy it.
David and Francine, June 2024
