About the Project

I’ll be one of around 20 ‘Pilgrim’s Bandits’ trekking 100 miles across the Sahara Desert to raise money for the charity Help for Heroes. The Pilgrim’s Bandits were formed in 2005 by a team of ex Special Forces who’ve been raising money ever since. This year they’ve opened the challenge to people from all walks of life, in the hope that we’ll all succeed, both in the trek itself and in the much-needed fund-raising.

I’ll be team nutritionist, and I’ll be joined by - amongst others - musician Mark Hill (of Artful Dodger and Craig David fame), Bad Lad’s Army star Corporal Richard ‘Nooky’ Nauyokas and his wife, Liz.

Together we’ll arrive in Morocco on November 12th. After a day acclimatising to the temperatures of Marrakech, we’ll load up our 4 x 4 support vehicle then drive the four-hour journey south to the start of the trek, where (hopefully!) we’ll meet up with our Bedouin guide, M’hamed Bouhaddou.

Over the next five days we plan to trudge 20 miles a day through the hot desert sand, experiencing extremes in temperature, as well as sand storms and scorpions. We’ll be rationed to just 3 litres of water a day, and will have to find a water well in the sand if we run out!

MAP

The trek is in an L-shape from just south-west of Zagora and ending up at M’hamid. As you can see from the Google map there’s a road back from M’hamid to Zagora, which continues on to Marrakech. At the east you’ll see the border with Algeria.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of highs and lows along the way, but they’ll all be worth it if we can raise a sizeable sum towards various Help for Heroes projects already underway, like an £8 million swimming pool and gym complex at the Headley Court rehabilitation centre, a £3.5 million specialist mental health centre, and £500,000 to help build homes for relatives to stay in while they’re caring for injured loved ones.