What The Desert Teaches

In April this year, we pointed two Jeeps south and set off towards the Western Sahara.

For months beforehand, the trip had occupied much of our spare time. The Jeeps had been stripped, modified and tested. Equipment was obtained, discarded and bought again. Every item had to earn its place.

We were not building museum pieces. We were preparing working vehicles for an adventure of a lifetime.

Inspired by the desert vehicles of the Long Range Desert Group, the Jeeps received a host of changes intended to make life easier in a landscape that has little interest in your plans. Additional cooling, extra storage, recovery equipment and navigation aids all found their way aboard.

Much of that process was documented through our sister history page, Geek Of History, where we followed the conversion from start to finish.

By the time we rolled onto the ferry, there was very little more we could do. The rest would be decided by the road. Or what passed for one.

The first thing that strikes you about the Sahara is not the heat. It is the scale.

You can look across a valley, a plain or a stretch of coastline and convince yourself that you are seeing a great distance. Then you drive towards it for an hour and realise you have barely begun.

The land has a habit of making fools of your judgement.

Distances become difficult to measure. Mountains that seem close enough to touch remain on the horizon all afternoon. Tracks disappear into the landscape and reappear miles later.

The world simply feels bigger.

Britain is a small country. We are never far from somewhere. A village. A petrol station. A pub. Another road.

The Sahara is different.

You can drive for hours with little change except the angle of the sun and the colour of the earth beneath your wheels.

At first it feels strange. Then it becomes rather wonderful.

Many of us spend our lives trying to make the world smaller. Faster journeys. Faster communication. Faster answers.

The desert offers none of that. It asks only that you accept its pace.

Some days we crossed great open plains of stone. On others we followed the Atlantic coast, where the ocean rolled endlessly onto empty beaches.

We drove through mountain passes lined with scrub and hardy vegetation.

We crossed landscapes that seemed more suited to another planet than our own. It was never quite what we expected.

That was one of the great joys of it.

Before arriving, most people imagine the Sahara as an endless sea of sand. The reality is far richer than that.

There is sand, certainly. But there are also mountains, canyons, rocky plateaus, dry riverbeds and coastlines so empty that they seem untouched. Each day brought something different.

The desert has a way of stripping away assumptions.

The same proved true of the equipment we carried. Some items became indispensable.

Others remained untouched. The clothing was no different.

Like many people, we had imagined the desert as a place of relentless heat. We expected blazing sun and cloudless skies. We expected to spend most of our time trying to stay cool.

Sometimes we did. But the reality was more complicated.

The mornings were often cool. The evenings cooler still. Then there was the wind.

Much of our early route followed the Atlantic coast. Driving in an open Jeep at forty-five miles per hour is very different to standing still in the sun. Add a strong ocean breeze and conditions can change remarkably quickly.

It was here that our wool jumpers, cap comforters and battle dress blouses began to earn their keep.

For generations, explorers, soldiers and travellers have trusted natural fibres.

There is a tendency today to think of such things as old-fashioned. Something replaced by modern materials and technical fabrics.

Yet the further we travelled, the more obvious their value became.

A wool jumper could be thrown on in the morning chill and worn comfortably as the day warmed. It cut the wind. It breathed well. It remained comfortable after long hours in the vehicle.

Heavy cotton shirts performed equally well. Neither material demanded much attention. They simply worked.

The Stanley V-neck jumper and the Bronte jumper both spent more time in use than we had expected.

Not because they looked right in photographs. Not because they carried any sense of nostalgia. But because they provided a practical purpose. That is something our predecessors understood very well.

Good clothing is not about novelty. It is about usefulness.

A garment that keeps you comfortable in changing conditions is worth more than one that merely promises to do so. Perhaps that is one of the lessons the desert teaches. New does not always mean better.

Progress does not always travel in a straight line. Sometimes the old solutions survive because nobody has found a better answer.

Wool remains wool. Cotton remains cotton. The wind remains the wind. The desert remains the desert.

By the end of the journey, we had travelled through landscapes we could scarcely have imagined only weeks earlier.

There were moments of hardship. Moments of uncertainty. Moments when the scale of the place felt almost overwhelming.

Yet those are not the memories that stay with me most.

Instead, I remember looking across the desert one afternoon and seeing a line of ten Jeeps stretching into the distance. Each carried a small cloud of dust behind it.

Ahead lay hundreds of miles of open country. Behind lay hundreds more.

The engines droned steadily. The horizon shimmered in the afternoon light.

For a short time, the modern world felt very far away. I had not realised how much I needed that.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Raid premieres on 26th June.

A short film following our journey across the Western Sahara in a convoy of historic Jeeps.

Watch the teaser below:

For Clothing Featured In The Raid, visit The Raid Collection