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- 1963 London to Cape Town January 20th
- 1963 London to Cape Town January 19th
- 1963 London to Cape Town – January 18th
- 1963 London to Cape Town – January 17th
- 1963 London to Cape Town – January 16th
- 1963 London to Cape Town January 15th
- 1963 London to Cape Town January 14th
- 1963 London to Cape Town – January 13th
- London to Cape Town – January 12th, 1963
- London to Cape Town – January 11th, 1963
- London to Cape Town – January 10th, 1963
- London to Cape Town – January 9th, 1963
- London to Cape Town – January 8th, 1963
- London to Cape Town – January 7th, 1963
- London to Cape Town – January 6th, 1963
- Petrol in My Blood – trade enquiries
- David Benson’s article about his arrest
- Press quotes from Eric Jackson and Ken Chambers
- The roads in Africa
- Round the world delays?
- The pretty girl on the docks at Cape Town
- Guns and tear gas
- Rosie’s Bar, Monte Carlo
- A few things I’ve discovered
- How’s the book going?
- Ouch
- Tulip Rally 1966
- The great meat pie race
- Cortina d’Ampezzo
- Mud, glorious mud
- First rally car – last rally car
- Meanwhile, back in Barnsley
- Across the Sahara and back
- Timbuktu
- George Hinchcliffe – London to Cape Town
- London to Sydney can’t be tougher than this
- Edgy Fabris
Meanwhile, back in Barnsley
Telegram home to Yorkshire from Cape Town
You’d be amazed at some of the things I find in my collection of memorabilia. Quite how it came about that I am the custodian of hundreds of photographs, letters, newspaper cuttings, books and so on, I’m not exactly sure. But every time I go to explore amongst the boxes, I find something I’d forgotten about – such as the telegram pictured here.
As you can see, this is the telegram that Eric Jackson sent home to Yorkshire from Cape Town.
Nowadays, it seems strange to think that a telegram was the way we used to get news about my dad’s exploits. Despite what people may think, we were relatively civilized in the darkest, deepest depths of Barnsley. We’d stopped painting ourselves with woad quite a few years back.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to remember that in those days, telephone calls between Africa and England were difficult – and remarkably expensive (and you know what they say about people from Yorkshire when it comes to saving a bob or two). Cellphones weren’t around, of course. There was zero contact from my dad when he was on his trips. He had sporadic contact with Ford Motor Company, of course, and as Ford would have probably only contacted us if there was bad news, no news was good news!