Story & Photos By Robbie Basaras

[Robbie Basaras is a 27-year old electrician from South Woodham Ferrers, outside of Chelmsford, in England. He loved “taking things apart as a child” which led to a fondness for Land Rover and Triumph automobiles. He shares an adventuresome side with his girlfriend, Rachel, a schoolteacher. Here’s their adventure –ed.]

Among the great aspects of living in the United Kingdom is the fact we have so many different countries, diverse cultures and better weather pretty much on our doorstep. For example, within an hour and a half I can arrive in a foreign country complete with all my camping equipment and SWB Defender. The 30 minute crossing by train underneath the English Channel opens up the gateway into France. Too close? OK, take a 12 hour drive south and you’re in Spain. Too common (after all, most of us Brits take our holidays there)? How about a few hours drive east into Belgium or Germany? The list goes on and on. One half hour crossing and you’ll find a road to anywhere in Europe, Asia or if you take an incredibly long drive to avoid another sea crossing, into Africa.

Naturally this got me thinking. I have a Land Rover which can take me anywhere I want and a saintly girlfriend who wants an exciting holiday. How about a driving/camping holiday somewhere hot? I trawled the internet and various magazines to get all the info I needed and booked Rachel and I on an adventure trip to Morocco. The vehicle that would make this possible is my 2005 SWB Defender with only 14,000 miles on the odometer.

To live out of a SWB Defender for two weeks took a surprising amount of planning. I used my tried and tested approach of “access anything at any time.” This meant removal of the back seats and building a false wooden floor in the back. I also constructed two full length drawers which were only accessible when the back door is open; hopefully, this would deter opportunistic thieves as anything worth any money (camcorder, mobile phones, etc.) would be out of sight and out of reach. It also gave me two levels from which to store items aiding the “access anything at any time” focus. Now I had to decide where everything would go.

My Defender’s modest mileage enabled me to forgo serious spares such as half shafts or a spare clutch. I did pack take filters, a few oil seals, all fluids and some fuses and bulbs. I had bought a twin hob and grill gas cooker which I mounted on the back door. An Engle Fridge/freezer took care of the important stuff like the beer, and two five gallon containers held the drinking water which was pumped by a screen washer pump through a flexible tube to wherever it was needed. A Hannibal roof rack and roof tent provided accommodation, keeping the back of the Landy clear of the clutter caused by sleeping bags and tents! From underbody protection and safety I installed Mantec steering guard, safari snorkel, front differential guard and JATE rings. I bought a bottle jack (nice and small) and a dandy all-in-one tyre repair kit, including bead breaker, tyre pliers, a rasp and patches- quite comprehensive for it’s overall size. Two tool/ storage boxes adorned the back of the roof rack, separated by two 2 gallon Jerry cans. The one “must have” for the trip had to be the CB radio. Without the radio I would of missed out on so much banter and have become seriously lost when I got separated from the convoy in one of the cities in Morocco. The journey started by ferry from Portsmouth in the south of England to Bilbao on the north coast of Spain. We took a two day drive through Spain to the south coast via a place called Saint Helena; we were halfway there. We could have driven the length of Spain in a day but as part of our convoy we had a 1974 Series III 88” soft top which was only happy at 50-55 mph. The next stage was a one hour crossing from Algeciras to Ceuta, part of Spanish Morocco and then onto the time warp known as the Moroccan Border Control, which consisted of one guy in a room behind an open window with metal bars whose sole job was to stamp papers and shout a lot.

Morocco is situated off the south coast of Spain and along with Algeria is Africa’s most northern country. Similar to Spain its greenest parts are up north and the more desert-like areas are in the south. It is home to major cities such as Marrakech and Fez and also houses a huge expanse of sand known as the Erg Chebbi dunes. This covers a 5 x 26 mile area and is one of the highlights of the trip when you get to go dune bashing!

Empty the contents of your vehicle and leave them at base camp, pull the fuse on the ABS and Traction control, drop the tyre pressures to around 12psi, strap anything down which is likely to fly about, select low box 2nd or 3rd and drive it like you stole it! The reason for disconnecting the ABS and Traction Control is that although it’s a godsend on wet grass and slippery surfaces it can get you well and truly stuck in soft sand. As one tyre spins and digs down, the Traction Control applies the brake to that wheel transferring the torque to the other three and spinning the next one and so on. You basically end up digging yourself a hole. The best way is to drive on sands is minus TC, ABS and leaving the difflock out! The reason being that if you get stuck you still have one card left to play. Get stuck, difflock in, reverse out. If you get stuck with difflock in you got nothing bar a radio to get help!

The only way I could describe driving two tonnes of Land Rover running 12psi on soft sand is like driving on air and within a couple of hours your confidence grows to almost dangerous levels. This confidence caused me to overtake a bogged down ‘96 110 Defender, nail the throttle up a very steep dune and come very close to standing her on her nose on the way down. Luckily I kept away from the brake and stamped on the throttle which stopped the front tyres digging in and putting us on our roof. The only casualty was Rachel’s knees; she slipped forwards when, for a brief moment the Land Rover was vertical and she bashed her knees on the Defenders “afterthought” air con system. This was for me the only scary moment and one never to repeat. Driving a rolled Defender 1,500miles home would kinda ruin the Holiday!

For my one scary moment, Rachel had several, from scary toilets to scary spiders, but the worst for her was without a doubt the mountain twisties! For those of you that have never driven a Td5 – powered Defender, think of it as a diesel equivalent to a V-8 but with twice the MPG. With equivalent power and torque it enables the usual walking pace off roading but also lets you nail the throttle, change up all five gears and throw it around like a sort of two ton sports car! I’ve lost count of the amount of times I have out accelerated unsuspecting individuals at the lights. Not because I’m quicker, it’s because they didn’t expect an “old” Land Rover to smoke it’s tyres, drop it’s ass and go like a scolded two ton cat! This made the twisties down the mountain, bags of fun. Well it did for me; Rachel went quiet and rather pale! We drove for ten days and up to 10 hours daily, covering between 130 and 180 miles of off road driving along boulder strewn tracks. We even drove about 50 miles of the Paris Dakar rally route. Each night we stopped to set up camp, get a brew going and cook dinner. Once I’d relaxed enough I gave the Landy a thorough going-over, checking wheel and propshaft bolts, hoses, belts and cleaning out that damn air filter again! I fitted a safari raised air intake to minimise the amount of dust going through the air filter. This only works however if you are the convoy leader. However, I was not – therefore my engine inhaled most of the Sahara desert through its K&N oil impregnated filter turning the dust into a kind of muddy cement. When the Landy started sooting heavily, I needed to improvise so an oil soaked sock was stretched over the opening of the snorkel to act like a crude pre-cleaner. The Engel fridge freezer worked fabulously. We were sitting in the middle of the western Sahara watching a mid 1980’s Defender 90 floundering at the bottom of a dune (mud tyres and sand don’t mix) when we decided to have a drink. The bottle of Evian I pulled out of the fridge had started to freeze, even though the fridge was set to “cool.” The temperature inside the car must have been around 32 degrees centigrade because we’d had the doors open and aircon off, impressive stuff! Wish it was a beer though

Morocco, being a largely Muslim country, frowns upon alcohol. That’s not to say it isn’t available, it’s just rarer than it is over here. One guy who was working at a bar wouldn’t even touch a bottle of wine, I had to walk behind the bar, take it off the shelf, open it and pour it myself. Just a shame I had to pay for it! It was a complete culture shock. Similarly, how many times to you see a policeman stop locals using a gas station to allow a convoy of Land Rovers to fill up unhindered? One poor fellow who ignored the policeman’s instructions was consequently back slapped across the face and told politely to get to the back of the queue. The policeman looked at me and smiled. He seemed quite proud of his power over the locals. Either that or he wanted to run off with Rachel!

Once we’d been through the Erg Chebbi dunes we drove on to fez, the roads becoming more civilised by the mile. This time we opted for the five-star hotel rather than the roof tent. The rest of the convoy was glad of a bath, mod cons and a pool. I was restless, I needed to get back behind the wheel. Even when I was in bed I had the drone of the gearbox and slightly offbeat thrum of the turbocharged five cylinder diesel ringing in my head. It just seemed more relaxing being behind the wheel with hundreds of miles yet to cover. Lounging by the pool seemed wrong, I was wasting time. Nobody else thought this though!

Once we’d returned to the north coast of Morocco, endured the boredom and chaos of the Moroccan Border Control and started heading on the ferry back to Spain it became all too apparent that the exciting part of the trip was coming to an end – even though we still had around a thousand miles to go. This is usually the tedious part of any journey but hey I still had the fun of attempting to get my Landy out of the tightly packed ferry!

As the ferry docked into Algeciras it dawned on me I could now go into virtually any shop and buy as much beer as I wanted and as a consequence things seemed rosy again. How wrong could I be! I had just unfolded my roof tent, was on my way down and placed my right foot on apparently “firm ground.” Unfortunately for me it was the crest of a small rut left by a previous camper. When I took my left foot off the last rung of the Landy’s ladder my right foot gave way. I heard it and damn did I feel it. I couldn’t believe it. I had all that way to go on my own as the next day I was driving my girlfriend to Malaga airport so she could get back home for work on Monday and I‘d just broken my ankle!

I managed to get to the airport dosed up on pain killers, I dropped Rachel off, waved goodbye and headed north through Spain on my own to Saint Helena to meet the rest of the convoy. For some reason we’d miscalculated our funds and I ended up trying to get home on 88 Euros. The first tankful cost 44 Euros and I was still a few hundred miles from Saint Helena. That was pretty scary because my cell phone was out of credit and the remaining cash was now reserved for diesel. I managed to meet the rest of the crew just as the fuel light came on. Apart from that, the rest of the journey went without hitch. The Land Rover performed impeccably and it was only when I pulled up on my driveway I could tell people how reliable it had been after all, it would have been foolish to say so, so far from home! Since my trip through Spain and Morocco I had my Defender’s ECU re-programmed. Her power has gone up from 122bhp to 170bhp (yes 170bhp!!) and the most impressive bit is the 265lb/ft torque available from 1900rpm. She idles in fourth gear high box chugging along at about 12mph and will do 100mph flat out but unfortunately due to the relatively low gearing she runs out of revs. I reckon with the right gearing she’ll do 120mph. Not bad for a two ton brick!!

Would I return to Morocco for another holiday? Yes, indeed, but this time I would watch my step upon returning to Algeciras.

•