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Kingsley Holgate and his Land Rover Expeditions are legendary all over Africa. This African adventurer has undertaken some of the most exciting and unique African adventures of all time. Kingsley takes his team and his Land Rovers where others fear to tread. His expeditions are not just overland trans Africa type trips on roads and tracks. Holgate adventures follow ancient foot paths, navigational lines, continental outlines and geographic pathways. His adventures don’t take huge backup crews and support vehicles. He travels with his adventurous family, also driving Land Rovers with all the overland kit and supplies that they will need on board. The Kingsley Holgate expedition books detail his adventures.

Cape to Cairo: One family’s adventures along the waterways of Africa
Cape to Cairo chronicles the epic journey of Kingsley Holgate, his wife and son across the continent as they venture along South Africa’s Wild Coast, up the magnificent Okavango Delta, along the length of the great Zambezi River and across some of Africa’s greatest lakes, including Victoria, Tanganyika and Turkana.

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Africa: In the footsteps of the great explorers
Fans of Kingsley Holgate and his wild adventures, tackled fearlessly with his petite wife Gill and son Ross and a varying band of expedition members, will relish this new series of epic exploits.

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His vehicles are sponsored by Land Rover. It is fitting for such a legendary explorer to use such a legendary vehicle. Kingsley comments: “You’ll always get some bloke that complains about dust or a rattle but when you buy a Landy what you really pay for is a tough, off-road 4×4 chassis, transmission, steering wheel, a never-say-die engine, and four wheels. The rest is for free! So don’t complain, just enjoy one of the finest heritage 4×4′s in the world.” Kingsley has a long history with Land Rovers, he started off with a Series 2 back in the 70′s. This series 2 was used to carry trading supplies to his trading store in the Nkwalini Valley in Zululand. It also fulfilled many other functions as you would expect including an ambulance and a water truck. Eventually the Holgates got into safaris, running Safaris in Zululand. They offered expeditions to remote areas and villages in Zululand. By all accounts Kingsley was using a Series 3 station wagon.

The first Kingsley Holgate Expedition was a Cape to Cairo trip down Africas waterways. They used this trip together with their aquired skills in movie making to start a legacy of documented modern day adventures. Their first major land expedition using Land Rovers was the Great Explorers Expedition in the footsteps of David Livingstone. According to Kingsley this decision was pretty obvious “It’s not surprising that when we got into serious expeditioning, our vehicle of choice remained a Land Rover.” This expedition used two green standard Land Rover Defenders, a TD5 110 Station Wagon and a TD5 130.

 The next expedition was in 2004, the Rufiji Expedition followed the footsteps of Captain Frederick Courtenay Selous. The two trusty Land Rovers were used as support vehicles for this river expedition. The next big expedition was the Capricorn adventure, a round the world trip by Land Rover, boat and bicycle following the Tropic of Capricorn. White Land Rover TD5 Defenders were used, and this time it was a 110 Station wagon and a 110 hardtop. This trip had to cross some serious terrain as they were following a compass and not a road. The latest expedition is call the Outside Edge Expedition, a circumnavigation of the outer edge of the African continent. This trip has already had some challenges travelling up the West African Coast through the diamond mining areas and the Namib desert. The vehicles are 3 white TD5 Land Rover Defenders, two 110 station wagons and a 130 double cab. The Outside Edge expedition had an amazing send off with a world record Land Rover convoy leaving from Cape Point. Kingsley was pretty impressed with the turn out and wrote: “You have proved that Land Rover owners are not afraid of challenges. You’ve braved the elements to succeed in the world´s longest Land Rover Humanitarian convoy ever to have left the Cape of Good Hope. We have also cracked a Guinness record which is being sent off to them for ratification. More importantly, you succeeded in a massive show of solidarity in the fight against malaria proving that Landy owners care for Africa. Thanks for saving and improving lives through adventure. Hope to see you in a year’s time.” (The world record is subject to official confirmation.)

Tags: 4x4 adventures, cape to cairo, kingsley holgate, land rover, sa adventure, sa adventures

This entry was posted by SA Adventure on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 13:44 and is filed under South African Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.