We're off!

We officially started our journey down on the Lizard Peninsula on Wednesday, with some interviews and photo shoots with the local press at the Goonhilly satellite earth station, before navigating our way down to the 50th parallel and travelling the 3 miles or so west to east keeping as close to the line as we could manage. Three down, lots more to go!

After a chance encounter we called in to Shelter Box, a Helston-based charity supplying humanitarian aid worldwide. They were very generous with their offers of help and equipment, which we may get a chance to repay in some far-flung place.

We kicked off our research on Wednesday evening, carrying out our first case study. Formally we carried out a semi-structured interview, covering all the areas we are interested in to build up snapshots of farming life... Informally we had a nice long chat with Trevor, who'd kindly agreed to meet us, while he showed us around his lovely farm and we scribbled notes! We also discovered that cows are rather fond of Spike's feet!

We rounded off our stay with a fun visit (well, we enjoyed it at least - let's hope the kids did!) to Mullion school on Thursday morning before bidding farewell to the Lizard until we return in 5 months time!

Slightly anti-climactically we've now returned to London to pick up equipment and finish preparations, but we will be off again very soon...and this time we'll do it properly!

- David

Finishing touches

We're now putting the finishing touches to the vehicle before our departure from Team Latitude's London HQ tomorrow.

We'll then travel down to the South West of England for several school visits and our official start at Goonhilly Earth Station next Wednesday. Goonhilly Earth Station on the Lizard Penisula is the site of the world’s first parabolic satellite communications antenna. They've kindly let us visit the site and start the expedition there in front of the region's press.

Preparation has been frantic in recent weeks as our leaving date rapidly approached. Sourcing equipment ranging from satellite data links to spare wheels has taken a lot of time - more than we anticipated.

However it's all starting to come together and we can wait to roll out of here tomorrow in our wonderful Land Rover, ready to drive around the world!

- Spike