After 18 months of overlanding the Silk Road, when we got home, we had to make a big decision, should we now pass Landy on to the next adventurer or should we keep her and give her another outing? We had travelled for 18 months, visited 24 countries in 3 Continents, and travelled 44,000 kilometres. Our journey had started in Greenwich in South East London and finished in Sydney in New South Wales. In between there had been Iran, China and the Pamirs and many other countries. Had we had enough?

Jim and I are not entirely typical Overlanders. We are not ‘good’ with cars and mechanically minded. We are getting a bit ancient, though in reasonable health, but we suffered a bit pushing up the pop-top to prepare our sleeping compartment, then lugging around the tools stored in our sitting space and occasionally re-securing the spare wheel on the roof (which we never used)!

We had been patient with the untraceable roof leak which occasionally soaked our mattress and bedding and endlessly calm in the face of our well documented gearbox woes (now resolved).

But in spite of the challenges, we were really happy, pushing on and seeing our route on the garmin trace ever Eastward. We became adept at handling the many officious borders with the car and became old pros at finding oil and air filters etc

In my case, before we took off in 2018, I had not really been very adventurous since I had taken a Greyhound bus around the United States on my own, aged 17 back in 1972. You can work out how many years have passed since then. I had travelled then from Florida via all States in the South to Los Angeles, and back via San Francisco and Nashville, ending up in New York with a pile of stories to tell. (So no change there). The difference was that these stories were scribbled in notebooks and typed up on my return by a family friend. There was no internet, Facebook or Sat Navs. Communication home was by postcards. There were no mobile phones and my savings were all converted into travellers cheques and my travelling costs were largely a 99$ Greyhound ticket which I paid for with a school prize I had (very unexpectedly) won. So no plastic cards and certainly no Revolut card!

By the age of 24, soon after University, I had my first baby and was a single parent, so life needed to get a bit more serious and I worked throughout. And it was several babies, (jobs) and partners later, that I met Jim and he and I finished off the business of bringing up the children. (Shared with my exes!)
For both of us, work and family life meant that we took the regulation holidays to destinations largely in Europe or the East Coast of the USA.

That was until we looked round and discovered that the children were all adult and we found ourselves both retired from work. Quite liberating really. So naively, we decided to buy Landy in 2017 and take off on that Gap Year we had never had, and our Silk Road trip was born.

Well having learnt a lot about life on the road, many of our friends asked why would we do it again? Well, because we can! Plus we missed out Georgia and Armenia en route to Iran, and we had promised ourselves that inshallah we would go back again.

So we now had the opportunity to either sell Landy and buy something a bit bigger with more sitting around/camping space or to make adjustments to the set up in Landy to make life a bit easier and take off again. So we decided to put Landy up for Sale. The lure of the bigger camper really appealed.

Then we went to the Overlander Show in Stratford to sell her, where we were also invited to talk about our experiences. We were in the company of so many enthusiastic overlanders that we wavered and changed our minds.

Better the devil you know and love. And who knows, if we buy another pre-loved vehicle, we may spend as much on further preparations anyway! We found at the show, an outfit which specialised in Landcruiser preparations (who were happy to tackle the camper modifications we needed) and we decided instead to re-invest in Landy. Some of the investment was for Landy and some was for our own comfort.

Even though Landy’s bodywork looked fab, a closer look at the under carriage revealed quite a few rust spots. In fairness to Landy, these needed to be tackled. There was still a small but persistent leak around the gearbox and we needed to get that sorted. Apart from that mechanically we seemed to be going strong. Then there was making things easier for us camping.

We wanted to reduce the amount of baggage in the car so we had less to move around. We did struggle a bit to reach things, particularly if knees, backs and hips were being a bit iffy! The sight of us crawling around inside to reach socks and knickers from deep hidden lockers had to be seen and heard! (Argh, ouch, f…k, groan).

One really accessible stowage area was full of a large tent, poles and a side awning and poles plus other related camping gear. We decided to ditch these and Landy has now been fitted with a very fine ‘Batwing’ awning, which provides 270 degree protection from sun and rain.

We could buy sides to make it more ‘habitable’, but really we rarely used our tent. Now we can prepare food outside at the rear of the car (as well as inside), and walk round to the table and chairs without getting wet if it is raining. Also there are now no poles or pegs to stow. Instead of crawling around inside to reach our clothes, we can now stow these more accessibly and use the internal space for necessary items used less frequently.

The original pop-top roof had a ventilation hatch which we never used. Originally it had a photovoltaic panel on it. Maybe someone thought angling it up a bit when camped might have been beneficial. Who knows. But it was heavy and it leaked! (The photovoltaic panel stopped working and was removed and replaced with a light weight supplementary portable kit).
To resolve the leaking once and for all we took the plunge and have had the poptop roof entirely replaced. This may seem a bit extreme but many attempts had been made to waterproof the hatch, to no avail. Plus we had to make the roof easy to lift for any one of us single handedly. It had been a bit of a struggle and I was constantly putting my back out in spite of our near balletic synchronised lifing action. (Jokes). So we are investing in an electric assist. Can’t tell you if it works yet, as it is still a work in progress. But it is the big talking point in our lives.

Removing the roof has necessitated replacing the poptop canvas sides and putting in new mosquito netting and replacing the imbedded lighting. The canvas was looking a bit tired and there were holes in the netting which were covered in tape! So now it will look very elegant and any pesky mozzies won’t have a chance.

Well so much has been removed to carry out the works, that we have been persuaded to rip out the camper electrics and start again. I can testify that we were a mass of wires leading to God knows where! This,we hope, wîll make upkeep easier. The Waeco fridge which worked well throughout our trip, packed up when we got home, but hopefully a new switch mechanism will sort that out. I have been promised that the electric hookup plug will be relocated from under the rear tailgate to the side of the car, where previously it was always getting soaked and muddy in a downpour.

We are now in that anxious period. The car has been ‘held’ in the garage since last October. It is now the end of February and works are still ‘progressing’. We are keen to get her back to do things like cleaning out the water tank, replacing filters, ensuring the sound system is working, getting her serviced etc. before we set sail in a few weeks time. Our radios never reliably worked because of some undiagnosed electrical fault which we pray will now be resolved. She has got a new (Coolmax) mattress to celebrate the leak free pop-top and we are keen to see how everything fits back in with the new setup.

The cost will have been eye watering and will do little to her asking price when we eventually call it a day. We aim to have a few more adventures. But wow, whoever gets her next will be so so lucky.

Hi.

Feb 23 Landy’s Makeover

Blog selection shortcut