“Ben, I don’t know what you think of this, but something inside me thinks this could be incredible…”

In terms of armchair travel, I’ve been round the world a few times. Having two parents who’s journeys between them included travelling through India for a month living on trains and sailing to the island of St Kilda, the most westerly of the Outer Hebrides, I must have some genetic thing which makes me want to travel to strange places. I was sat at work one night shift in October 2009 and saw a link to the Mongol Rally on the Mongolia page of Wikitravel, one of my 5 favourite websites. And so I emailed Ben. And the rest, as they say…well, it’s not happened yet, actually, but it will!

I’m 36 years old, married to a woman who’s way out of my league, and a ridiculously proud dad to a very tall 6 year old and a very independent 2 year old. When I’m not working as a Support Worker on a busy Psychiatric Unit, I try to play around on my computer. I’m going to be in charge of navigating our little team once TomTom starts to throw up question marks, and to a lesser extent I’m going to be doing a lot of cooking. I’m pretty sure this is because I’m fat, and the other guys realise we won’t starve if I’m in charge of food. I’m also good at moaning, so I’m told.

It’s great that we can have what will be an amazing experience and also do some good at the same time. One of the things I love about this whole adventure is the oppurtunity for 5 guys to raise what we hope will be a shed load of cash to help the fight against a female illness. My mum succumbed to breast cancer in 2000 after a long battle. There’s not a single day goes by when I don’t miss her, particularly now I have children. If what we’ll do can help other families avoid going through what mine did, then I’m very happy. It’s more important than ever that the fight against Cancer is well funded as advances in treatment and care over recent years have been nothing short of phenomenal. We’ll also be donating all of our kit and the ambulance itself to local charities in Mongolia once we arrive.

It’s nice to feel warm and fuzzy about something that will be so completely amazing to do.