In our world where health and safety has gone mad, ex overlander Duncan Milligan proves that the spirit of British eccentricity is still alive. From taking a flying car across the Sahara to Timbuktu to classic car rally’s from Beijing to Paris. His most memorable trips have been with The Adventurists. Who else would drive a fur covered Bedford van to Cameroon or terrible Chinese motorbikes across the mountains, jungles and deserts of Peru? You couldn’t’ make up half of the stories Duncan tells. This is the stuff Top Gear only dream of.

After leaving his job as an overlander at Dragoman, Duncan formed an adventure company called 'Tour de Force Adventure Logistics'. ] The first job I did [as Tour de Force Adventure Logistics]; obviously, was to take a flying car to Timbuktu. It’s obvious isn’t it. It’s the first gig you’re going to get, which was an amazing experience. And this is what made me think we were onto something, is that I saw an article in the newspaper about it, and they were flying to Timbuktu , and I thought hang on a second, I’ve travelled through the Sahara, I’ve been to Timbuktu five or six times, maybe this might be useful to them, so I fired off a little bit of an email, like an hour later I got a phone call ‘yes, when can we meet’, and it was like, ok this knowledge is going to be useful to some people, and so the long story short, we took a flying car to Timbuktu, and it really did fly, it’s based upon Para motor technology which is basically a parachute normally, that and someone with a lawnmower engine on their back and this engine powers them into the air and this completely mad scientist Gilo built this incredible machine; and it was led by Neil Laugton, ex SAS proper adventurer. And we disappeared off across the Sahara desert having amazing adventures, and believe it or not we actually made it to Timbuktu. It was an incredible adventure.

Some of you might of heard of ‘The Adventurists’, how many here, just a quick show of hands. The future of travel as far as I’m concerned. The Adventurists are brilliant. If you haven’t had a look; go have a look at their website. The idea is the world is way to safe now, health and safety’s gone mad, you cannot have a proper adventure anymore, that you are taken somewhere, your hand will be held and there’s backup and there’s support, basically people like me around to make sure you’ll get to where you need to go. And for some people that’s great, that’s what they want. But, for The Adventurists set up by Mr Tom ten years ago, was a drunken idea in the pub, where they thought ‘what’s the stupidest thing that we can come up with, how can we have a proper adventure?. And they decided the best thing to do was try and drive a Fiat Panda from the UK to Ulaanbaatar, so they gave it a go. They didn’t get there but they had a brilliant time in the process. The next year they tried again and they had three mates that came with them and three cars.