Sent to the TES in the hope that our un-paralleled photographical and mechanical skills backed by a formidable mastering of the English language will prove just too much of an opportunity to turn down. Catapulting me and Dave to giddying heights of celebrity and stardom as we enthrall the English speaking world with tales of daring and the crisis management of incidents brought about by a general lack of preparation and a propensity to do daft things in front of a camera... despite being 26 and knowing better.


A good friend of mine and myself are taking part in the 2007 Plymouth to Banjul Challenge, a 4000 mile unsupported drive departing from the UK on the 17th of December and heading to Banjul in The Gambia where the cars we make the journey in will be auctioned and the proceeds donated to local charities identified by the challenge organizers.

In addition we have been raising money for Pageant a charity supporting educational projects in the Gambia.

Through Pageant we have established links with Sinchu Balyia, a primary school of 3000 in The Gambia. During the summer I met Omar Janneh, the science co-coordinators from Sinchu Balyia whilst he was on a 6 week Pageant sponsored visit to the UK. Omar's trip included visits to several UK primary schools which I was able to organise. Omar will be repaying the favour by taking us round his school, allowing us to take a lesson and introducing us to his family and way of life. He has also written an article for our website.

All the details of our preparations, sponsors, links to charities, Omar's article and the general story so far are comprehensively covered on http://www.ibrakeforcake.com/ The site is well established and contains a significant amount of constantly updated content covering motor sport, mountain biking, climbing, snowboarding, surfing, mountaineering, hill walking, lifestyle and the Banjul challenge and provides much more of an insight into our motivation for taking part.

My good friend Dave works as a professional photographer and I am an ex-motor sport mechanic working in development engineering. Between us we will be filming, documenting and photographing the entire trip for ibrakeforcake and will be centering on the delivery of a crate of educational resources, picked out by Omar and paid for by our fundraising, to Sinchu Balyia.

Having already gone to such an enormous effort and still harbouring a completely unchecked level of enthusiasm for the whole project we are hoping the TES would be interested in running our exploits over one or more articles. We would be more than happy to provide copy and photographs and have already generated a substantial amount of material on which to base one or several articles that could help highlight the lengths that the Gambian people are willing to go to to obtain a fraction of the education we sometimes take for granted.

The above is the briefest of summaries of the story so far and I would be really grateful for the opportunity to speak to you, to fill in the detail and give you a much better idea of the quality of material Dave and myself are capable of producing. Please take the time to check http://www.ibrakeforcake.com/

Kind Regards

Chris Lawler