“Some Beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost…”
– Erol Ozan

We often find ourselves looking at maps or searching for the GPS that 9 out of 10 times is stuffed in some drawer in the house that no one knows about. We are so keen on knowing where we are heading and to plan right down to the finest detail and last minute of everything that we tend to lose track of that where we want to go. Richard Branson once said :”If happiness is the goal- and it should be, then adventures should be top priority.”

True words to follow and really take to heart, for once you find happiness then nothing or no one will ever be able to tame the wild fire that burns within you. This is the story of how my 1998 Land Rover Defender 110 Tdi came to be called “The Lady Alice”

As this logo that i have created suggests this story has something to do with a ship…a very old one at that, yet extraordinary in the true spirit of adventure. My story starts on a beautiful summer day the 17th of March 2013 when my flight landed in Capetown where i was ready to accept the keys to my new “old” landy, as it was at the time I was doing 4×4 adventure trips where I guided like minded people out to enjoy the great scenery along with their 4×4 vehicles. Back then I used to drive a 1996 Land Rover Defender 90 Tdi and along with the trips I have came to the realization that my epic 4×4 was starting to get too small for all the gear and if the business grows I am then going to have some space issues and I was in no mood to start towing a trailer along into the wilderness.

So the one day the bright spark hit me, I am going to advertise my defender 90 and see if someone is willing to buy it then with that money look to buy myself a Defender 130 or preferably a 110 CSW with the same Tdi 4 cylinder no-nonsense, no-fuss engine and mechanics.

It Turned out that there in fact were people very interested in my Old blue machine I called “The Wild Rover” and I was not at all prepared for that as I still need to source a vehicle to replace it with or else I might end up without transport for a while. As soon as I got off the phone with the first potential buyer for my Defender 90 I jumped at all the online marketing hubs like Gumtree and OLX and eventually came to find a couple of vehicles that I am interested in so I star phoning around to gather some background on the landys I am looking at to know what I am letting myself in for and also to see if the owners looked after their vehicles.

About a week went past and I still could not find a suitable replacement for my 90 and by this time the people are phoning me from all over to come and view the blue monster so I really had to act quick or I am going to lose out on a deal. I got home from some adventure in the outlaying mountains and jumped at the computer to scan the websites once more to find someone interested in a swap deal where they wanted a defender 90 and they were willing to swap a defender 110 V8 with the 3.5litre Rover motor, now my mind is racing and the gears are crunching, am I going to make the leap into the great unknown of a petrol motor after all the years of Diesel….so, I got on the phone and to my luck no answer on the other end, then the next mind frame sets in – one where I am convinced the V8 is a good idea and now someone’s going to jump me at the deal and after about 10 minutes I try again and success!!! There is a voice on the other side and as anyone who owns a Land Rover can tell you that once you phone and start talking Landy Talk there are simply just never enough free call minutes or airtime available.

After about a one hour long phone call I am still not 110% convinced that the V8 would be a good idea…so I carry on searching and scanning the internet to find hopefully a Diesel Landy and then I saw this amazing looking white Defender 110, a 1998 model Tdi clocking in at 297 000 kilometers and it has been looked after by the looks of the photos, I read the add and I thought this vehicle is most probably sold already but nonetheless I am going to give the number a dial, ends up I reach a Woman on the other end and she told me that the Landy is still available and she gave me an Email address of the owner who by the time was over in the UK busy with some work.

Not long after I sent the email I was chilling in bed one night then my phone rings from an number in the UK, I am now suddenly fully awake and sitting up straight ready to hear from the other side, then after another long talk I am laying in bed wondering what to do…V8 or Diesel…V8 or Diesel…V8 or Diesel then I went over to the numbers and thought to myself that the V8 would be a better buy…advertised as a 1994 model V8 110 defender along with brand new winch, BIG mud terrain tires and new bullbar and front runner roof rack so I let the guy in the UK know i am passing up the Diesel truck and Venturing into the realm of V8’s.

Eventually got to the V8 and what a fail!!! Not at all what was on the pictures or advertised, it was more like a 1984 than it was a 1994 model and just about nothing worked on the damn thing It would have cost me another fortune on just getting the vehicle roadworthy again 🙁 then after a couple of arguments and long phone calls I managed to get my money back for the V8 but lost the traveling fees so I took a bit of a knock financially but I still had enough to buy another Land Rover Defender 110 but now I am without a vehicle and need to find one ASAP.

Back to my emails the first person I contact is the guy in the UK to find out if his Landy is still available down in the Cape and by a little change of my luck it miraculously was available so I made some more calls and bargained with the owner a bit to end up clinching the deal and buying the Tdi 110 that I have initially looked at, Booked my flight and off I went to Capetown where there would be someone waiting for me at the airport with the new truck and since I first had my eyes on it I was sold, this Landy is going home with me!!! I quickly went through everything and off i went leaving the Airport with a full tank of fuel and ready for the 1300 odd kilometer trek back home in my Defender 110!! I just could not stop smiling!

She was solid on the road and purring like a kitten! Now there were a whole 20 inches of wheel base more to cope with and a turning circle to get used to but what a car!! Driving along the Highway going North I just knew that I made the best choice and should have gone with it from the start! I challenged myself to drive all the way to at least reach Bloemfontein where I could sleep over at my brother as he was studying there and then we could spend some time together in his valley for a couple of days before I head back to Newcastle. as I was driving I am constantly listening and felling all the vibrations to make sure everything is in place.

The Drive is a very scenic one along the mountain ranges of the Cape that then change into the vast flats of the Karroo and the Free-State then back to some mountains in KZN. Just before I went to fetch the Landy I spoke with the owner changing our stories and sharing landy moments then he told me a very interesting thing…a bit of trivia he told me…he was a designer for one of the weapons that Judge Dredd uses in the action movie DREDD and he ended up making the Serial number in the weapon he designed the same as the number plate on the landy!! how insane is that!!!

So here I am sitting in the landy eating up the kilometers on my way to Bloemfontein and now I’m starting to think that I need to find a suitable name for the beast, and i recon by the end of my long journey I should have one as I now have plenty of time to bond with the new wheels 🙂 with names running through my head faster than I can remember them I am dumb struck and blank out….

As I drive along I decide to leave the Name idea for a while and got this idea that I need to look for a roadside Farm-stall selling wine as I want to buy a bottle of wine to take home to my parents (it’s not often ones gets to buy wine in the cape) so i ended up at nice little place just outside of a town called De Doorns, here I got to re-stock on sweets and other consumables to keep me awake on the road and just stretch a bit of legs, snap a photo and be on my merry way…

but then…

Without any warning all of a sudden the new landy does not want to know anything about starting (O.0) baffled by what the causes could be I jump on the phone and talk to a few fellow landy drivers and soon found the cause to be loose connection on the starter motor, the small lug connecting earth does not make proper connection then it’s dead, so I dug up my trusted Leatherman multi tool from my bag that was still sealed from the flight and started stripping turbo pipe in an effort to make room to reach the lug and get it seated proper again on the terminal (but now everything is crazy hot and I end up burning blisters on my hands to get it sorted) but it was done and barely half a turn of the ignition and she is alive again!! Now the smile is back on my face and I get back on the long road still heading North, North-East to reach Bloemfontein on the same day.

So eventually I passed through the great nothingness of the Karroo and entered the Free-State but now daylight is fading fast and I still had a good distance to cover and I’m still grumbling name ideas in the back of my mind.

 

 

 

Then the road got really busy as it was getting dark and everyone that knows a Land Rover Defender knows that their headlights are matched by two candles at best so it was all hands on deck as I battled through the dark of night to reach Bloemfontein by 10PM hungry and tired, so  I went to pick my brother up from his flat and we went about getting some KFC (they have a 24 hr drive through) so that helped and as we drive over to the local KFC I look down at the fuel gauge and the word that comes to mind is stunned…I could not believe how far I was traveling on a tank of fuel, compared to the 90 this was quite awesome!

The next day we went about town scoping the shops for some odds and ends for camping as the city has more options of camping shops available than what I am used to, we were to attend the annual Landy Festival where like minded people gather for a fun weekend camping and driving their land rovers on a 4×4 track.

So I spent a few days with my brother and decided to head back home to come and pack and get ready for the landy festival as it worked out I would be back home on a Wednesday and we would be leaving for the fest on that same Friday so time was a limited factor. So I made it back and we enjoyed a great weekend at the fest until one of the farm workers decided to drop a tank full of septic waste on my landy – that’s a story for another day…

It was in all this chaos and hype that I still had the thought lingering in the back of my mind that my landy still has to earn a name…will DREDD stick or will something else emerge from the trails of adventure…Every time I get in my landy I feel this presence of adventure, as if this landy has seen it all and has a long campfire story that is yet to unfold. Every time I drive on some lost road or even the freeway I feel like I am the captain of a ship, steering into the unknown looking for treasures and lost islands, I feel like I am about to conquer the world and discover that which is lost to a modern day society. I feel the winds call out to the mountains as the compass no longer points the direction, I smell the dust and find music in the deep roar of thunder on the horizon the rover devours the miles on the path of adventure, I feel the rhythm of the earth and the heartbeat of my continent like that of forgotten African drum beneath the great thorn trees with fires raging and spirits dancing.

It truly is a feeling that no one else other than the green blooded likeminded brothers of the oval badge will understand. To own a Defender will set you free in a way you never could imagine possible. Then as I was one day sitting around plotting where my next adventure will be, I read a piece that the great white beard (Kingsley wrote) – he spoke about Dr. David Livingstone and the adventures of Sir Henry Morton Stanley as he set out to find Dr. Livingstone that was lost in Africa for some time…then I got intrigued and started digging deeper into this whole story. I found numerous articles and book publications online where I was glued to the screen of my computer and phone as I could not stop reading, after some time mesmerized by the words floating before me I come across something interesting, I found a piece about Stanley where he set out to explore Africa into the rivers and Lakes that they knew about at that time, Stanley was sure he had found the source of the great Nile River and so he set out to attend this great adventure into the dark continent. After some time he realized that he would need a boat, but also would need to be able to transport this boat from the coastline inland toward the rivers and lakes and he had to figure out how to accomplish this major task.
The expedition then appointed a man named James Arthur Messenger, a Teddington boat builder and Royal Barge master he was set to build a boat for Stanley, one that can be transported across land and be able to set sail in the great Lakes of Africa. So Messenger build a collapsible boat comprised out of multiple sections that was to break up in pieces and carried across land by the porters and easily assembled at the lakes or rivers, a single sail ship called “The Lady Alice” named after Stanley’s’ wife.

It was right there and then the gears in my mind started crunching and turning molding my ideas to what I believe brilliant conclusion. I am going to name my landy..
The Lady Alice… for she sails the open roads with ease (no stabilizer bars – remember) and is always set on a great adventure of exploration, to carry an explorer and his crew on a mission to live life with no regrets. The landy always gets me there and back again and to tie in with the past of this landy that I believe has seen a great deal of the dark continent, to be a part of the sense of adventure and to free the minds of those who travel along.
From that day onward my landy was no longer DREDD but now known as “The Lady Alice”, I then set forth to design a “logo” for a sticker that would be visible on the rear passenger doors for all the world to see (see image right on top) a wooden sail boat, with a map of Africa for this is my continent and this is where my blood runs deep, and a second flag representing the passion I have for this brand…Land Rover…The Lady Alice will roam the great plains of Southern-Africa always ready to set out on the next great Adventure to come.

Some Photos I found of the Ship that Stanley used:

 

Some More photos of my landy:

 

 

 

This is “The Lady Alice” overland and expedition ready! thanks to my Main Sponsors – 

General Tire South Africa for the General Grabber X3 tires, they really enable me to the concept of Anywhere Is Possible! https://www.generaltire.co.za/car
Hella South Africa for the intense LED Light arrangement on the roof as well as Bull Bar, The Luminator and Luminator X LED spotlights lights up the dark corners of Adventure https://www.hella.com/hella-za/HELLA-AUTOMOTIVE-SOUTH-AFRICA-HASA-61.html
Fluid Kayaks for the Fluid Bamba Fishing/Adventure Kayak, it allows me to reach new never before seen places https://www.fluidkayaks.com/
Bundu Gear off road accessories for the full transformation of my landy providing a replacement Bull bar, Roof rack, rock sliders, rear bumper and Gull-Wing access panels. keeping the passengers and vehicle safe on all my adventures https://bundugear.co.za/

Please go and visit their websites to find any products that you might need for your next great adventure,I hope you all enjoyed this post, keep an eye our for more to come 🙂 adventure never stops!

keep roaming, keep seeking, free your mind and live your life!

Cheers!

…i