Island Caretaker Blog » Ben’s Bio Before Best Job

University

The standard format for life: Go to school – get your education, go to college – further your education, go to university – finish your education. So I did all of that and came away with a BSc in Automotive Systems Engineering. I was part of the big system.

I’d done what I needed to do and now I needed to find out about the rest of the world!

Champagne Mumm

I was fresh out of university in ‘97 and spent the summer working with the events team for Mumm Champagne promoting the brand at the UK’s top sporting events; Cowes Week yacht racing, Lords cricket, Ascot horseracing. Awesome job, awesome fun.

The offer came to represent the company in Cape Town, South Africa at the Round-the-World yacht race – Of course I’ll go!

Spent a month there and loved South Africa. Perfect climate, colourful people and rich in culture. I fell in love with the African smile.

Back in the UK winter I knew I had to go south again so worked crappy jobs earning the money to pay for the flight. Packing boxes, labouring on building sites…even filling garden gnome moulds with cement one year!

Found a job in Port Edward, Kwa-Zulu Natal working for a company who ran 4×4 tours along the coast for travellers who liked fishing, camping and exploring. I was in heaven.

North or South?

I swapped summers between the northern and southern hemisphere for six years thinking about how I could explore the rest of the African continent.

Planned a couple of exploratory expeditions around southern Africa with some friends to watch the Solar Eclipses in 2000 and 2001. Visited Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia in a Land Rover and loved being on the road.

Afritrex was becoming more than an idea…

Worked at the Royal Star & Garter charity as an Events Coordinator for three years while planning the expedition with my friend Owen Thompson-Dredge.

Needed more money to make it happen so reluctantly left the charity and started work for a friend’s father to help foot the bill. Took three years, all the time focusing on the light at the end of the tunnel – Afritrex, my African adventure.

In my downtime…

I lost a really good friend in the Asian Tsunami of 2004, Charlotte never made it home from her adventure. Her Dad set up a charity called Char’s Fund and each year I helped manage a music festival called Onionfest which raised £1000’s.

Fitness and endurance are key things in my life. I love running marathons, swimming and endurance so test myself as often as I can with new challenges and races.

Afritrex

5 marathons, 5 mountains, 1 year, 65,000kms in a Land Rover.

After five years of planning I set off alone (Owen never made it) to start a huge adventure driving around the African continent taking on some crazy challenges to raise money for charity and to fulfil a lifetime’s goal and it was here that I met an amazing girl called Bre Watkins who I spent the next two years of my life having adventures with including the Best Job in the World. You can read all about it here www.afritrex.com