I thought I'd put this little thread together for you all to let you know of our fundraising endeavours whom myself Ben Southall and a travelling buddy, Owen Thompson-Dredge will be undertaking this time next year 2007.

We will be departing the shores of the UK for between 12 and 18 month's (money dependant of course!) circumnavigating the African continent travelling from Morocco down the west coast to Cape Town and then back up the east finishing up in Egypt before heading to the UK via either sea or land, again dependant on monies available.

The trip is an opportunity to discover areas of the continent which neither of us have travelled to before and whilst we're doing this raise money for our three chosen charities - Farm Africa; chosen for obvious reasons as we want to give something back to the countries we are passing through, IDE (International Development Enterprise UK) help rural communities increase their productivity, and The Royal Star & Garter Home; a disabled ex-service charity based in SW London and my former employer!

Our fundraising adventures are presented in two different dimensions; the first links closely to the RS&G charity amd involves visiting as many of the sites across the continant as possible, where the Victoria Cross has been won (The Commonwealth's highest military award). This will take us on a journey which is off the beaten track and give us very different destinations to visit.

Our second part of the fundraising involves 10 challenges - completing 5 marathons and ascending Africa's 5 highest mountains. The marathons we will take part in are Marrakesh, Kysna SA, The Comrades SA, Victoria Falls and Nairobi, the peaks being Toukbal Morocco, Mount Cameroon, Mt Kilimajaro, Pic Magherite DRC and Ras Dashen Ethiopia. This provides us with a real physical challenge while were on our journey, with the hardest part likely to be staying fit enough sat on our bums in the Landrover for most days!

We will be running a live website documenting our journey as we go and hope to go live with this by the end of Feb 07 (www.afritrex.com) as well as putting together a film covering all of our exploits and experiences which we will have screened on BFTV (British Forces TV) and will also be used by the charities we are supporting.

I suppose I am posting this thread to let you all know how excited I am about the coming 12 months before we depart and to look for any advice which people can offer in terms of sponsorship, the expedition and in general.

I look forward to your comments,

Ben

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www.bestlifeintheworld.com

Hi Ben,

you may or may not remember me from your youth. Anyway. I owe Owen about 100 quids worth of canvases from... erm.. 1997 and... well seeing as i have lots of canvases with art on them now i'd like to give him the artwork i promised him 10 years ago. Have you got an email address from him?

Nils

you get get ahold of me at info@uncommunicative.com