We are Steve and Margaret (aka Maggs) Wilson, most recently from Glossop in Derbyshire although we both originated in the South of England – Steve in Surrey and Margaret in Cambridge.  We met six years ago at work and quickly found that we shared the same dreams about how and where we wanted to live our lives.  We both had experience of living abroad.  Margaret spent two years living in Botswana as a teenager, and Steve lived and worked in France for ten years.  One memorable evening early in our relationship we sat outside a pub after work and talked about how we would both love to travel, and specifically to drive overland from the UK to Cape Town.  We didn’t know at the time that the seeds we were sowing would come to fruition six years later.

If you want the motivation to do something different with your life, try a 9 to 5 desk job.  The daily routine of a 20 mile commute to work, endless days spent doing largely the same thing, a 20 mile commute home and an evening spent dulling the boredom by drinking wine and watching Netflix makes one question one’s lifestyle after a while.  We were very lucky in reaching a stage in life where the opportunity for change presented itself and we realised that we could actually give up our jobs and do something very different.  We already had a Land Rover Defender 110 300Tdi – in our view the perfect vehicle for this kind of travel – and we had the roof tent – purchased from money gifted to us when we married.  Steve rigorously researched and reviewed every aspect of our vehicle and equipment and produced a list of work that needed to be done to prepare the Land Rover and things we needed to take on our trip.  Our aim was to make the car as reliable as was possible and to set it up so that we could be entirely self-sufficient for a period of at least four days.

We were also fortunate in having the support and encouragement of our families, all grown up and mostly independent.  This was especially reassuring for Margaret whose role in supporting and counselling her children had been her raison d’etre for 26 years!  They finally managed to persuade her that they can now function without her…