Richard and I are 32 and for the past four years have lead a rather itinerant life. Following university and a variety of jobs we realised that the world of 9-5 was not for us and an interest in diving and a yearning for travel took us to the Indian Ocean where we planned to island hop for six months. Well our plan didn't quite work out - the first island we hopped onto was Mauritius and we found it rather difficult to hop off again! Six months, one cyclone, one wedding and two PADI Divemaster certificates later we made it back to the UK and then thought 'well, what next?'.

Richard had always wanted to experience the desert and for as long as I have known him would spend hours on end pouring through books on overland travel, the Sahara, the Middle East, Thessiger, Lawrence, expedition vehicles...you name it, he had read it. I took slightly longer to persuade - the idea of climbing into a vehicle, driving 1000's of miles through a diverse range of countries both on and off the road and living out of a tent for the best part of a year just didn't appeal. But, things can change.... After living such an idyllic life in Mauritius we decided it was time to do the big overland trip. Rather than take the classic route down through the Middle East and Africa we decided to travel across North Africa, up through the Middle East, into Eastern Europe and back to the UK. Richard wanted to see the desert and the Sahara seemed a pretty good place to start! The decision made, we went on the hunt for a suitable vehicle and settled on a 12 year old, 55,000 mile Range Rover who soon became known as Florence. We had about three months to prepare and finally set off to dip our toes in the sand on December 6th 1999.

Our first journey lasted for seven months and took us through Tunisia, Libya (of course, our announcement that we would be visiting Libya was met with 'you'll get shot/kidnapped/beaten up/left for dead in the middle of a burning desert - in fact, Libya was and still is one of the best countries we have visited and Libyans amongst the friendliest people we have met), Egypt (the less said the better), Jordan (what a wonderful country - and Wadi Rum is still my favourite area of desert), Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. It was an incredible experience and for many people it would have been enough to satisfy their need to travel. But on our return to the UK a chance remark by an aunt of mine - 'do you know that you have a relative who liked the deserts too?' - set us on our current course.

I soon discovered that the relative in question, Captain William Shakespear, was a man of great character - an accomplished photographer and one of the leading scientific explorers of the early twentieth century. From 1898 he served in India with the Devonshire Regiment and Bengal Lancers, before moving to the Indian Political Department and becoming Consul at Bandar Abbas in 1904. It was from here that he undertook his first serious expedition - starting big, he drove from the Persian Gulf to the UK; a serious undertaking and one that even today would be hard work.

In 1909 he became Political Agent in Kuwait and it was here that his love of the desert and the people of Arabia began. Numerous expeditions took him across thousands of miles of previously unexplored deserts, culminating in his 1914 crossing of the Arabian Peninsula. It was the route of the 1914 expedition that we retraced during our visit to Saudi Arabia in January 2003, while gathering information from the sons and grandsons of the people that were friends with Shakespear.

Captain Shakespear was the first westerner to meet Abdul Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Saud - 'Ibn Saud' - who became the king and founder of modern Saudi Arabia. The two men became good friends and in later years King Abdul Aziz proclaimed Shakespear to be the greatest westerner that he had ever met. As Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the UK, pointed out in a recent newsletter, 'historically, good and positive relations exist between Britain and Saudi Arabia' - at the root of this relationship is the friendship between Ibn Saud and Captain Shakespear.

So why have we undertaken our current expedition and where will we go from here? I want to discover more about a relative who clearly shares with us a love of the desert and desert travel and by following in Shakespear's footsteps we hope to learn more about what drove him to undertake his expeditions. As his story has unfolded, we have come to the conclusion that he deserves greater recognition - why is it that he has barely been heard of in the UK and yet in Saudi Arabia he is regarded a hero and amongst the Bedouin of Jordan, a country that he spent only a few days travelling through, his story has passed down through the generations? As Gertrude Bell, another British agent and explorer, pointed out, when Shakespear was wounded and killed at the Battle of Jarab in January 1915 'We lost in him a gallant officer whose knowledge of Central Arabia and rare skill in handling the tribesmen marked him out for a useful and distinguished career. His deeds have lived after him.' Sadly Captain Shakespear's achievements appear to have been overshadowed by those who followed him to the deserts of Arabia in the years following his death.

We have several ideas that we are working on at the moment, which hopefully will come to fruition over the next year or so. In the pipeline is an expedition to retrace all of Captain Shakespear's desert journey's, and another to visit Iran, Pakistan and India and to retrace his 1907 drive from the Persian Gulf to the UK. While we are on our enforced break in the UK, we are concentrating on working through the hundreds of pages of information that we have collected over the past twelve months and the many thousands of photographs taken by Richard during the seven months that we were travelling. It is also a chance to reflect on what we have achieved. There were many people who thought that our idea to visit Saudi Arabia was slightly far-fetched and that we would never be allowed into the country. Then of course we had the threat of war hanging over the Middle East and all the uncertainties that came with it. We were given plenty of advice - including 'perhaps you should avoid the Middle East all together' which would have rather defeated the purpose of the expedition! - but determination and a stubborn streak pushed us on with our plans and I hope that, through our experiences, we can show the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in a different light.

Sadly, the aunt who started us off on Shakespear's trail died before we left the UK in August 2002. But I hope that she is sitting somewhere having a good chuckle about what we have been up to!

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Last Updated: Sunday, November 21, 2004 at 10:13:10 pm