Kingsley Holgate’s Cape Agulhas-to-North Cape Expedition from Africa to Europe hit its halfway point of their 19,000-mile journey, having entered Europe with their new Defender 110s.
Kingsley Holgate’s Cape Agulhas-to-North Cape Expedition from Africa to Europe hit its halfway point of their 19,000-mile journey, having entered Europe with their new Defender 110s.
We’ve written about Kingsley Holgate before, and his many Land Rover-based expeditions across Africa. He and his Foundation are proponents of both adventure and humanitarianism, spreading their work to every corner of the African continent over forty expeditions over the years.
The latest Expedition, the Defender Trans-Continental Expedition, left Cape Aghulas, South Africa in February. They’ve been heading up Africa since then, working their way across a continent they know so well. They crossed the Great Rift Valley, saw the wildebeest migration, rounded the African Great Lakes, river rafted in the Nile, crossed the Equator in Uganda, crossed South Sudan, visited the tenuous border region between South Sudan and Sudan, and finally made it to Egypt.
Along the way, they have continued their humanitarian work. This expedition is focused on five humanitarian causes: malaria prevention, vision services, water purification, early childhood development, and overall conservation and community building. Along the way, they have stopped at many places to do their humanitarian work, often with partners that they have worked with for many years.
All along the way, the expedition has shown the potential of the new Defender doing that thing that Land Rovers do best: exploring the world. Since the L663 Defender launched in the global lockdown period, it’s possible that this is the largest-scale expedition that anyone has done with them yet. The three Defenders continue to be champions and prove their worthy spot in the Land Rover lineage.
The trucks have now shipped to Greece, and the team is meeting them for the last leg of the journey. They’ll drive to Red Wharf Bay in Angelsey, Wales, where the Wilks brothers sketched the outline of the Land Rover in the sand 75 years ago this summer. Then it’s off to the North Cape in Norway, the northernmost point of Europe and the furthest point north you can drive from Cape Agulhas.
It’s a remarkable expedition, especially in the circumstances of a reopening world and with a vehicle that has yet to do the long expeditions it was built to do, but as always, the Kingsley Holgate Foundation is getting it done and making the world a better place along the way.
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