Capetown To Cairo In A £20 Car.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19240, 29 November 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

Capetown To Cairo In A £2O Car.

OLY half a dozen people were on j the quayside at Dover on September 29 to welcome back to England the two young intrepid British women, Miss Ellen Clare Budgell and Miss Margaret Belcher, who recently made the perilous trip from Cape to Cairo by motor-car. Four hundred people cheered them off as they set out from Capetown on April 1 for their journey through the African desert, and one of the women who waved them au revoir was on the quayside at Dover. She had dashed to England specially to welcome them. It was purely as a holiday jaunt that Miss Belcher and her companion set out on their adventure. They bought an old second-hand car for £2O in Capetown. It had already done 25,000 miles. They overhauled it themselves, got together equipment, including water bags and a chain mesh for use on the slippery parts of the road. They slipped a couple of revolvers in their pockets, said good-bye to their friends, and off they went. For five and a half months they were on the road, and when they arrived at Cairo they had covered more than 8000 miles without a single mishap, without a change of tyres, and with only five punctures. Both Miss Belcher and her companion, “Budge,” as everybody calls her in South Africa, where she has made her home since she gave up driving

British Women Adventurers Back Home

ambulances in France during the war, are typically English girls—shy, reserved, natural girls without an ounce of affectation between them. “We went pretty close to death a few times," Miss Budgell said. Lions held them up twice in the jungle, and one night as they were asleep in their car a lion and lioness came up. They set up a terrific roar. The two women looked out and saw the lions standing only a few feet away. “For a moment we did not know quite what to do," said Miss Budgell. “We waited for them to spring at us. Every second seemed that it would be our last, but the lions began to move slowly and’stealthily away. That was our worst thrill. “Then we were lost in the desert for two da}'s and nights. We hired a camel guide, but he got mixed up in his calculations through the speed of our car and that landed us into trouble almost right away. “We spent forty-eight hours just looking round wondering what to do and not knowing which way to turn, and then by good luck we struck the trail once more.” These two young women went where no other white woman or a motor-car had ever been before. It was almost a daily thrill for them to see natives dancing round their car. They brought the car home with them and drove it from the port to London.