Team Doghouse is born....

When the weather in the UK is good, it’s one of the best places in the world to be working outside. However, when it’s bad, it’s one of the worst.
It was at the end of one of those foul wet days, after a long saturated summer, that tree surgeons Paul and Guy, wringing out their drenched socks and looking like they had been swimming fully clothed, decided they needed to go somewhere warmer and drier.

And so, joking that the Sahara seemed perfect (it was quite hard to think of anywhere more warm or dry) the seed was sown. Little did they know that within weeks, this throw away comment would somehow transform itself into applying to the Plymouth Dakar rally, and committing to driving 4500 miles in an old car to the most remote city in the world: Timbuktu (If they’ve stopped kidnapping tourists there that is). They were delighted to discover that at this point, that they would have to donate their car to a charity, raising money for a local medical centre, so rather than just indulging a whim, they were doing something genuinely good and for the benefit of others.

Their epic journey will take them from the wilderness of North Wales and Cheshire across the Sahara desert following most of the Paris Dakar rally route, through countries where every other person seems to have an AK47, and though the local idea of a feast consists of goat’s entrails and locusts, there are 500 miles between toilets.

Needless to say, their girlfriends were less than impressed by this idea, and so team Doghouse was born.

Paul and Guy have a bit of a track record of doing slightly unhinged stuff, with Paul taking every chance to go scuba diving in pitch black muddy cramped caves, and Guy riding a mountain bike hundreds of miles across the Atlas Mountains with a Frenchman he barely knew.

They do not speak French (or Berber or Arabic for that matter) and have little in the way of mechanical knowledge, and so will be relying to a large extent on crossed fingers and speaking slowly and loudly to get them out of trouble.

Please get in touch with Guy or Paul if you can help or sponsor in any way, because they really really need your help.