Plymouth-Banjul Challenge Plymouth-Banjul Challenge The Plymouth-Banjul Challenge or unofficially the Ultimate Banger Challenge and previously known as the Plymouth-Dakar Challenge, is an annual car event for charity. It is not a race or a competition as its website states. It was first run in 2003 to Dakar and since 2005 to Banjul. It very roughly follows the route of the more famous Dakar Rally, visiting many of the same countries. Participants starting in Europe normally must go to Tarifa in Southern Spain. Then the course runs through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal and finally into the Gambia. The entrants must be driving
Plymouth-Banjul Challenge into a Welsh Ambulance and two Canadians who bought a manual car in France and spent the next few weeks learning to drive it. Since 2007, the rally also has a group of cars continuing on to Bamako, Mali. The 2009/2010 Banjul Challenge was called off by its organiser Julian Nowill due to Mauritanian security concerns (French tourist murders and Spanish aid workers kidnappings), but two teams from group 1 and three teams from group 3 pushed on regardless. Team midlifecrises (Paul James Gadsdon and Steph Copson) and team homesick (Chris Freestone) from group 1 made it all the way