My latest lucky escape... and a desert disaster The Hamster’s flying beach buggy balls-up for NYE show
When Jeremy, James and I decided to take a road trip across the Namib desert in southern Africa, we thought, easy. We are well travelled. We can handle anything.
In actual fact, it was like joining the Foreign Legion. There was an endless string of calamities.
The desert and the three beach buggies we were driving were not as compatible with sand as you might think.
Mine had a Beetle engine and black and white stripes. I was trying to be a bit cool, like an African zebra. It turns out, our road trip was perilous. When you’re surrounded by sand, the landscape blends into one. And while a dune might look gentle going up, you don’t know what’s over the top. You do have to be very careful. Those dunes can surprise you.
Unluckily for me, in what had to be the biggest disaster of the two-part special, the other side of one dune was a sheer drop. You’ll have to watch to see what actually happens, but it’s safe to say that I had a lucky escape. Obviously I’ve lived to tell the tale. Nothing else topped that. But I can tell you, for all our planning, we managed to get lost on the first few nights too.
We never made it to our allocated sleep points, wherever those were. We slept under our buggies for a few nights. It got so cold I slept with socks on my hands.
Don’t even mention snuggling up with Jeremy to keep warm. The very thought makes me feel a bit sick.
We’d all rocked up in our shorts and T-shirts at the start, too. We’re travelled people. We know it gets cold in the desert at night. But hang on a minute. This was like being off the North Yorkshire coast.
So you see, it’s really not that glamorous at all filming The Grand Tour. People get us so wrong.
The Beach (Buggy) Boys Part One, is available to watch on Amazon Prime on December 30. Part Two is available on December 31.