“Around the Med in a Morgan” – May 2011 will be a 3 month open-topped non-stop circumnavigation of the Mediterranean Coast in a British built Morgan 4/4 sports car - two drivers, very limited equipment, no trailer, no vehicle back up or even spare tyre! Departing from the UK we sail to Bilbao before traveling to Gibraltar, and from there drive clockwise around the entire Mediterranean coast, a journey we believe never yet attempted! We'll travel 12000 miles and , political situations permitting, pass through 19 countries: Gibraltar, Spain, France, Monaco, the whole Italian coastline, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and finally back to the Rock!
We'll be travelling open topped to maximize our contact with the environments in which we'll travel, and we’ve made the choice of the Morgan 4/4 Sport as we feel it best matches our idea of what Intrepid British Motor Adventuring should be, recalling those heady and long gone days when mustached youngsters put on a pair of sturdy boots, a pith helmet, and sponsored by their Great Uncle Harold went out and conquered the world! Man (or woman) and machine against the elements sort of thing!
On a more environmental note it also fits perfectly with our ideas of sustainable tourism, it’s extremely environmentally friendly, with a wood, aluminium and leather construction which utilizes very little plastic, and due to it's light weight and small efficient engine gives not only excellent smiles per mile, but a very low 140 g/km CO2 output. Perfect for these days where the world is still our oyster, and we don’t want to cook it…
A little about the team: Tony Hunter is a car designer, having served 21 years in the automotive industry and been employed with Rover, Renault, Land Rover, BMW, Ford, Volvo and Jaguar, and with a portfolio which includes the interior for the BMW Mini, MG-F, Range Rover, Jaguar XF, FAB1 for the Thunderbirds movie, Land Rovers for Tomb Raider, and as K-Tel used to say…much, much more! He's originally from Scotland, but at present, proudly designing for the Great British car industry in Warwickshire. He’s passionate about driving and especially driving open topped British classic cars. It was 20 years ago on a dusty road through Turkey that the idea “one day” he’d drive around the Med was formed – typically it just took a little while and meeting Lisa to get organised!
His co-pilot, the tiny Lisa Spratling is originally from Yorkshire, ex Royal Navy and spent 9 years in the Wrens as a photographer, flying in Sea Kings and Hawker Hunters. Despite her 5-foot stature she’s an avid mountain climber, (the higher the better as it makes her feel tall). She’s climbed and trekked across Nepal and traveled extensively through India, and for many years was managing an outdoor activity company in Slovenia. She's presently in Warwickshire putting the finishing touches to our plans, and where’s she can frequently be glimpsed rambling across the countryside or running behind a Morgan! She loves planning and organizing travel ideas, and believes the only way to go is visit places with bags of character and forgetting about any facilities, which she claims is enough to add an element of adventure to any journey!
We’ve adopted as the theme of the project, ‘The Great Race”, intending for it to inspire a lot of the style for the journey, though possibly without of course completing the trip in the all white attire used by Tony Curtis due to limited laundry facilities! Lisa will however be attempting to emulate the feisty sex appeal of Natalie Woods, both to keep our Tony on his toes, and for charming uniformed officials at difficult borders!
In keeping with this spirit, we’ll be reducing our luggage to the barest minimum, taking the minimal amount of clothes, (whilst retaining of course enough appropriate ambiance!), and only bringing appropriate space saving technology, a small electronic notebook, Olympus digital camera equipment, and a digital pad instead of travel books, but no GPS or "SatNav", and very limited camping gear.
Accommodation we use along the way will be of character and specially chosen to add an air of period on the road style, and we’ll be coastal camping wherever possible, both to avoid street parking the Morgan and of course add as much as possible to the adventurous nature of the project!
Our intention is to write, on our return a book, which will include photographs from the trip and illustrations sketched along the drive. It’ll be based on the people we meet due to the head turning appeal of the Morgan, and we think we've chosen the perfect car in all aspects for lots of positive attention. It's a fun, lovable, British icon, and everything we take in it will be compact, classy, stylish, British-made (where possible) and practical, an absolute perfect match to the car.
Our drive will also hopefully raise some awareness of two UK charities – Macmillan and Dove House Hospice. Our returning fund raising aim is to auction off a number of limited edition prints, photographs, sketches and personal items alongside odds and ends we collect along the way.
We started planning early, as in addition to the miles of red tape involved in Visas and Carnets we want to create some great publicity and ensure we have the right equipment for the job, due to the traveling conditions (we really do intend to be roofless all the way!) and limited space in the car
We're both very dedicated and working hard on this and aim to include in the build-up and during the drive, a range of companies or societies interested in being sponsors and we think it's a fantastic opportunity to advertise, and a great publicity opportunity. Our website is live, and we're keeping everyone up to date every step of the way with Twitter, our newly started blog, and our excellent and very popular official Facebook site linked from our home page with some well known motoring friends and experts in the design industry,
This isn't just a mad idea, a luxury trip or extended holiday, we're both professionals in our early 40s and this is the result of a 20 year long driving ambition which will very soon become reality, an exciting first attempt to drive this unique route, in a much loved and unique car.
Lisa Spratling and Tony Hunter
