Young men rally 'round for charity

16 December 2022

Three lads set off on the adventure of a lifetime in a beaten up 1958 Morris Oxford, called Ely, with a wonky list of destinations. The Rally of Inconvenience zigzags all over Europe and north Africa, taking in inaccessible check points in crazy locations. Team Gear Knobs were determined to collect as many of those points as possible in aid of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity and Park Lane Special School.

Harry Mattocks, 21, from Macclesfield, Ben Temple-Smith, 27, from Benson, and Rowan Black, 21, from Stafford, tested the bonds of friendship by living and sleeping in their car over thousands of miles. Despite this, they are still great buddies and are even thinking of another road trip in the coming months – possibly to Mongolia or India.

The lads replaced Ely’s engine after buying the car for £400 as a ‘non runner’. Two days after they set off she broke down and the engine needed replacing again. The wheels fell off in Latvia. Fire melted a bunch of wiring in Istanbul. Ely broke down almost every day and finally arrived at the finish line in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, with the bonnet strapped to the roof!

Rowan said: “It’s been emotional! We'd just spent a couple of days in the South of Spain fixing the car, which meant that we didn't have enough time to go to Africa, which was upsetting. Then, driving to the next point in Spain, Ely struggled all the way up this mountain around 2am, her brand new cooling hose burst.

“Then we managed to get the car stuck in a ditch in Pussay. Once we finally managed to get her out, five minutes down the road, in a village aptly named Angerville, the fan belt snapped. So did we. We turned off into a field and went to sleep. We couldn't spend another minute near that car until the next day!”

The team was blessed with Ben, a recovery mechanic for the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineer (REME) regiment, who put his skills to good use throughout the rally. Ben is living proof that the REME can recover just about anything.

Harry said: “It has been totally crazy. One of the best bits was the feeling of crossing the finish line in Tbilisi. We pretty much performed a miracle to get the car there in time because it was on fire in Istanbul just over 24 hours before!”

In the end the team may not have completed the whole rally but Ely did win an award. The organisers of The Rally of Inconvenience said: “Team Gear Knobs are the winners of the Poles of Inconvenience Rally ‘Best Car Award’. But not just for the perfectly unsuitable machine that seemed determined to soil its mechanical pants every 10 minutes. The judges were also impressed by the team’s stubbornness and inability to admit defeat.”