PRIZE CAMEL
Dave Phillips meets a stunning Camel Trophy Defender 110 with just 29,000 miles on the clock… and the family that’s about to drive it around the world
NO LAND Rovers were ever more abused than those used in the Camel Trophy. Between 1981 and 1998, Land Rover built the toughest off-roaders ever assembled, then tweaked them with a few extra goodies to make them even tougher, before despatching them to the most remote and hostile environments on the planet, to take part in the most gruelling adventure challenge ever.
Every Camel Trophy event was the survival of the fittest for competitors and cars alike. Defenders, Range Rovers, Discoverys and even Freelanders were pitted against rainforests and deserts, mountains and raging rivers. A few were lost completely, but most made it through the ultimate endurance test, although by the time they limped home some were in a very sorry state.
Later they were sold off to the general public and snapped up by Camel Trophy aficionados. Most had low mileages on the clock, but Camel Trophy diehards reckoned that every mile put on the clock during a Camel Trophy was worth a hundred miles in lesser places. They bore their battle scars with pride and, in truth, you had to be a doting Camel Trophy fan to love them.
Admittedly the distinctive Sandglow-painted ex- Camel Trophy vehicles are striking and the Camel Trophy Club stands and displays have been the highlights of countless Land Rover shows over the years, but would you entrust the lives of your loved ones to one of these battered and bruised Land Rovers?
If you were to plan the wilderness trip of a lifetime, along with the family pets and children, would you trust a 24-year-old Defender 110 that was the veteran of not one but two Camel Trophy events? One that had been standing neglected in a dusty yard in Portugal for the last two decades?
Russell and Tina Beale would. In fact they can think of
no better vehicle for the adventures they have planned for ten-year-old Josh and their eight-year-old twins, Oscar and Charlotte. Plus the man-sized bulk of Irish wolfhound Ffion and his kennel mates Merlin and Pepper.
But then, the Beales are no ordinary family. For a start, they are one of the cleverest families I’ve ever met. Dad Russell is a Professor of Computer Sciences and a nonexecutive director of Walsall Health Care and Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust. Mum Tina is a consultant paediatrician at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
They are also the most adventurous tribe I’ve ever encountered. Russell and Tina have climbed mountains, sailed their own yacht across the Irish Sea and cycled through the African Bush. They live in a converted barn in the countryside of north Shropshire, but like nothing better than venturing out into the wider world. And they reckon they’ve found the ideal vehicle to do it in.
“We’re adventure-loving people,” says Russell. “Last summer had a family adventure in the Pyrenees in our Discovery 4, going off-road and driving all the old smugglers’ tracks. We all enjoyed it, the kids loved it, but we needed something bigger for what we wanted to do in the future.
“We’d been looking for another vehicle suitable for expeditions and long trips. Back in 1995 before we had children, we drove a Toyota Land Cruiser around Australia. It took us six months to drive from Darwin to Perth, taking in Brisbane, Adelaide and Alice Springs, Perth, driving much of the way on the Canning Stock Route. It was so remote we had to have fuel dropped by plane.
“We’ve done various expedition-style trips over the years, but wanted to give the children an adventure. We love our Discovery but it isn’t the ideal vehicle for the job and we didn’t want a Toyota. We did some research and I reckoned the perfect vehicle for the job would be an expedition-ready Land Rover, like a Camel Trophy 110.”
Russell knew it would have to be a very well-preserved example to be reliable enough for venturing out into the remote off-road places they wanted to visit, but would he be able to find a Camel Trophy Defender good enough for the job. After all, Land Rover’s involvement with the event ended 20 years ago. After all this time, surely all the best ones had been snapped up by collectors? And the only ones likely to come up for sale would be rusty and unsuitable...
But Russell isn’t the kind of guy to give in easily. Tina knew that well enough. She found out the very first time they met, back in 1992. She was working as a doctor in the Accident & Emergency department of a Birmingham hospital when Russell limped in wearing a football kit and nursing an injured foot.
“I quickly diagnosed a broken foot,” says Tina. “I told him he would have to have his leg in a plaster cast but he said he wouldn’t because he was due to go sailing that weekend. I got cross and asked him frostily if he was questioning my professional opinion, but eventually we compromised and he agreed to have it tightly bandaged.”
As Russell hopped out of A&E, Tina thought she’d seen the last of the burly sportsman. But she’d reckoned without his tenacity. A week later he returned with a note on which he’d written a poem for her, and a bunch of flowers. But he knew only her name – Dr Newton – so he walked up to the hospital’s old-style reception desk.
He recalls: “I asked the woman behind the desk, ‘Do you have a Dr Newton working here?’ She said ‘No!’ but a doctor who was standing nearby said, ‘Yes we have! That’s Tina!’.
“By then I was embarrassed and had lost my nerve, so I thrust the flowers and note into the arms of the other doctor, saying, ‘Would you please give these to Dr Newton’ and fled from the hospital as quick as I could on my broken foot.”
Russell had left his phone number and email address on the message, so Tina called him and soon they were an item.
But it wasn’t a conventional relationship.
“Three months after we met, I went to the South Pacific to do deep sea oceanography around Easter Island,” says Russell. “I ended up in Chile, so Tina flew out to meet me and together we walked over the Andes to Argentina.”
The couple were great fans of the Camel Trophy and, in 1994, Tina went through the selection process, hoping to earn a place in the British team in the 1995 event, due to be held in Mundo Maya. “Unfortunately I failed the medical because my back wasn’t strong enough,” she says. “A few months earlier I’d crash-landed a paraglider and fell 40 feet to the ground, breaking my back and my arm.” Little did she realise that at around that time a certain Defender 110 that had just been retired after taking part in two Camel Trophy events would one day be playing a huge role in her life.
Fast forward to 2016 and, after returning from their epic adventure in the Pyrenees, Russell began searching in earnest for the Camel Trophy Defender of their dreams.
“I started looking online,” says Russell. “It wasn’t easy finding one for sale, but eventually I stumbled across an obscure Facebook page of a Portuguese bloke, who had owned an ex- Camel Trophy Defender 110 that he’d bought over 20 years ago. It had done 29,000 miles and sounded immaculate, but at that time he wasn’t sure if he wanted to sell it.
“But I kept working at it and, after exchanging several emails, he eventually changed his mind. He sent me a video of the car and I was even more determined to have it.
“He seemed trustworthy and I liked him. He had built a Camel replica and had set up the Camel Trophy Owners Club of Portugal, so I took a risk. I’d decided to buy it and I sent him the money. I knew there was no point in going to Portugal to inspect it because I had already made my mind up that this was the vehicle of our dreams.
“We flew into Lisbon and he met us at the airport. He lived on the coast, about an hour and a half from the capital, but when we arrived and saw the Defender I knew I’d made the right decision. Everything was fine, but the starter motor wasn’t working, so we found a secondhand one in a local scrapyard, fitted it and it worked.
“I drove it through Portugal, Spain and then caught the ferry from Santander back to Portsmouth. The handling was very civilised and the steering was taut and precise. It was like driving a new one.
“Once I got it home, I had it Mot’d. Apart from needing a new light bulb and a couple of other small things, like a weeping seal in one of the ball joints, it was fine and passed. Then the starter motor went again, but it turned out to be nothing more serious than a bad earth.”
The couple did some research and discovered that their Defender 110 200Tdi had been used as a support vehicle – an ambulance – in both the 1993 Camel Trophy in Sabah, Malaysia, and the 1994 event in Argentina, Paraguay and Chile. The competitors’ vehicles in both those years were 200Tdi Discoverys.
Says Russell: “We think it was then used for a year by Land Rover for promotional work. After that it was bought by the Portuguese guy who shipped it back to Portugal, where it stayed in storage until we bought it.”
That is why this vehicle is so immaculate – probably the best and most original Camel Trophy Defender out there and certainly the one with the lowest mileage.
Like all ex- Camel Land Rovers, some of the goodies were stripped out when they were sold on civvy street, but many features remain, including the Safety Devices roll cage, underbody protection and steering guards, Superwinch electric winch, modified electrics, Dixon Bate tow hitches and recovery points, Mantec snorkel, extended breathers,
“We have more ideas for trips to places like Russia, India and South Africa”
uprated suspension and transmission, roof rack, Hella driving, spot, fog, convoy and work lamps, Brownchurch bull bars and bush wires and auxiliary fuel tank.
The steel wheels and Michelin XCL off-road tyres are also original, although the tyres are slightly cracked in places after the long years of exposure to the hot Portuguese sun and Russell will probably be replacing them with more modern rubber better suited to long journeys on tarmac. “I will also be fitting a battery management system for the twin batteries, so that we can run a Waco fridge,” he says.
The vehicle is, after all, now a family-friendly expedition vehicle, and much better suited than the Discovery 4.
“We had already done interesting stuff in our Discovery 4, including the North Coast 500 in Scotland and the Pyrenees,” says Russell. “I’d fitted the Disco with underbody protection, tree sliders and a home-made drawers storage system, but it was tricky squeezing in ourselves, the kids, the dogs and all the camping and cooking gear.
“The Defender 110 is perfect for the job. The kids are excited and they love it. Even for the school run they want to go in the Camel. At home they are always playing in it or on it. They love the road trips and the adventures ahead.
“We all love camping. At the moment we have a pop-up tent that unfolds itself. It works really well. It’s probably not suitable for the middle of winter in a gale, but ideal for camping in warmer climates. There are two sleeping compartments. You soon get into the routine of making and breaking camp every day.
“Our first adventure will be later this summer. We’ll leave here, drive to Kent, then take the ferry or Channel Tunnel to Calais. We’ll take our time driving down through France to the Pyrenees, doing as much off-road driving as we can. We’ll make sure we stop at a campsite with a swimming pool for the kids every evening. While they go swimming, we put the tent up and prepare dinner.”
The journey down will take two weeks, after which they’ll stay in a house in the mountains for a couple more weeks, before heading back to Portugal to reunite the Defender with its former owner, and then returning to the UK.
“There are no particular places we want to see,” says Tina. “We’ll be exploring the wilder bits, meeting the people, throwing the kids into the local culture. It’s very important that children see the world for all sorts of reasons.
“Trips like this give them a broad range of experiences to draw upon in life. Put them into challenging situations so they are more resilient in later life. By going abroad they see there are different ways of doing things, which is very important. You can teach them about geography, history and maths. It’s more fun than doing it in a classroom.
“There is the joy of finding out about stuff and seeing that the world is an interesting place, plus it’s fun to do, of course. The kids enjoy it and we enjoy it. They never get bored and although they bring along their ipads and can play games, most of the time they’re having too much fun.”
I’m pleased to hear that future trips planned by the Beale family are even more ambitious.
“Next year we hope to drive it from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic of Cancer, starting in Norway and ending up in Morocco,” says Russell. “It will be a fantastic family trip, but we have plenty more ideas for trips in the pipeline, like Russia, India and South Africa. Wherever we decide to go, we know we have the perfect vehicle to take us there.”