A North Wales bakery worker and his friends have completed one of the toughest motoring challenges on the planet.
George Loftus, 27, a senior development technologist at the Jones Village Bakery in Wrexham, teamed up with pals Tom Suter, Jon Fowell and Hua Ying Baker to take on the mammoth 7,450-mile Mongol Rally.
Along the way they overcame a catalogue of breakdowns including two broken axles and were even banned from entering Tajikistan because their car’s steering wheel on the “wrong side”.
The gruelling, Top Gear-style adventure has been described as “motoring stupidity on a grand scale”.
It took them from Prague in the Czech Republic all the way to Oskemen in Kazakhstan, crossing 15 countries in 43 days.
The rules were simple – cars must have engines no larger than 1.3 litres and each team had to raise at least £500 for the environmental charity, Cool Earth.
But the journey was anything but simple for the group who called themselves No Half Sends – a slang term for no half measures..
Their £500 Renault Clio 2009 Sport Tourer – already boasting 138,000 miles on the clock before it even left home – took a battering.
At one point its rear axle snapped on the Turkish-Georgian border. At another, the team were forced to strip out the back seats to lighten the load and give the struggling motor a fighting chance of reaching the finish line.
The lads even had to wave goodbye to the trusty Clio at the end of the rally because repairs had drained their budget, leaving them unable to ship the car back to the UK.
Instead, it’s now destined for a rally museum being set up by a local businessman in Kazakhstan.
George, who lives in the Sundorne area of Shrewsbury and previously lived just outside Whitchurch on his parents’ farm ,said: “It was sad to leave the car behind but it’s gone to a good place.
“At the finish line there was a local businessman who was accepting cars off people who said he was building a museum out of all the rally cars that took part.
“Hopefully in a few years when the museum is finished we’ll be able to go back and see it again.”
There were plenty of comic – and hair-raising – moments during the trip.
In Georgia, the team managed to source a replacement axle only after stumbling across a hidden courtyard full of Renault garages.
Then, in Kyrgyzstan, a visiting welder at a remote yurt patched up their failing axle using part of a water pipe.
And in Tajikistan, border guards turned George away despite his paperwork being in order – because the steering wheel was on the “wrong” side.
He said: “They told me the car was illegal, not because of the visas or documents, but because of the steering wheel. We essentially got banned from Tajikistan for probably one of the weirdest reasons ever.”
Even assembling the team proved tricky. Teammate Jon Fowell was only able to join halfway through, linking up with the others in Azerbaijan.
But spirits stayed high. The friends turned the final push to the finish into a “Top Gear-style” race – with George and Hua Ying coaxing the wounded Clio to Oskemen while Tom and Jon flew and took a train. Against the odds, the car made it, and George’s half of the team arrived first.
Around 130 teams took part in the challenge this year and one high point was when the team drove to Cappadocia in Turkey, a renowned site for hot air ballooning.
“In the interests of time and saving money, we didn’t go up ourselves, but if I was there on holiday I probably would have done it, “ said George.
Another high point came even before the rally began when he and Tom drove on the world famous Nurburging in Germany on their way to the rally start point.
As well as raising money for the Cool Earth charity, George’s team supported five other charities in their sponsored drive, Lupus UK, the Stroke Association, Grinshill Animal Rescue, mental health charity BEN support for life, and the farming charity RABI.
They have launched a GoFundMe page for those five charities and have so far raised £1,750.
Village Bakery CEO Simon Thorpe was full of praise for George and his three motoring mates.
He said: “I take my hat off to the four of them for completing such an epic challenge and overcoming so many difficulties along the way.
“George is a hugely capable and resourceful young man whose problem solving skill were subjected to the severest of tests.
“It’s no surprise at all that they manage to reach the finish line in style and they have raised a lot of money for good causes in the process.”
