New sponsors at the Outdoor Show?

Steve Holland (aka The Sergeant Major) and I attended the Outdoor Show at the NEC in Birmingham looking for potential sponsors for our various projects.

We've currently got 4 major expeditions on the go at the moment - London to Cape Town record attempt; Bus to Bollywood; Xtreme Alps and another one down south which we can't divulge as yet, but all will be revealed soon.

We'd attended the Outdoor Show back in 2006 in the run up to the Xtreme Everest expedition and picked up quite a bit of interest from various equipment manufacturers, many of whom then went on to become major sponsors of the project. It had been heaving with companies covering all aspects of the 'outdoor' world, so we were confident that it would be more of the same this year - how wrong we were.

There was no representation from any of the big clothing sponsors as before - North Face, Berghaus and Mountain Equipment were all conspicuous by their absence, in fact the place seemed quite deserted. The only areas that were well covered were the various tourist boards from different countries such as Morocco, Malta and North East England. As soon as you walked in the door you were greeted by a Scottish whiskey maker and the Inland Revenue – had we come to the right place?!

It wasn’t all wasted time though as I got to finally meet Jemma Henderson, the Marketing Manager for ‘Look What We Found’ meals, who are very kindly supporting us on the London to Cape Town project. They make delicious pre-cooked meals that we heat on the engine block as we drive along – saves hours of fussing around, stopping to cook and greatly reduces the risk of any illness when only eating local food.

Two other companies that I had a chat with were Byoshower, who produce an anti-microbial gel that will kill around 99% of all the odours on your body – this will prove very useful during the 10,000 mile drive to Cape Town. Three sweaty men living in a Land Rover for a continuous 14 days doesn’t bare thinking about!

Mule Bar were there as well with their range of natural energy bars – delicious and hopefully they’ll go ahead and support us. They’ve very kindly sent me a box of bars to try out, with scrumptious flavours such as Summer Pudding; Mango Tango and Strudel, to name but a few.

I’d parked next to a fellow Land Rover enthusiast and we bumped into each other when I returned to my Discovery. Mark Moscrop and wife Heather had purchased a Lifesaver water Jerry can. It looks similar to a conventional plastic Jerry can, but comes complete with a super fine filtration system in it – simply poor foul water in one end and drink pure water out of the other. There’s no sterilizing, no waiting for tablets to work their magic and no bitter after-taste. I was so impressed by what I saw, I’ve called the company already and hopefully they too will be interested in supporting us.

We still need a clothing sponsor though, so if you happen to be the boss of an outdoor clothing company and would be interested in supporting the 6-man team, please get in touch with me. To give you a rough idea, we’ll have to cope with conditions ranging from -20°C to +40°C and every type of weather condition in between. We won’t want to carry much though as it all adds up and will be heavy and restrictive if we are carrying too much baggage.

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