Landmark destination for Landrover Defenders

Defender Transcontinental Expedition arrives at Nordkapp

By Desmond Slade 30^th July 2022

The South African Kingsley Holgate team of explorers have just completed their 40th expedition, called the Defender Transcontinental Expedition, arriving at Nordkapp, Norway a few days ago. For me as an avid follower of the Holgate family and their various adventures, in Landrovers and river boats, it was such a joy to hear Kingsleys voice, clear as a bell, all the way from the Arctic Circle, on this morning’s SAFM radio programme. Michelle Constant chatted with Kingsley as if he was in the Johannesburg studio, whereas he was near the northern-most point of Europe.

The expedition started at the southern-most lighthouse in Africa, at Cape Agulhas and travelled 35,000 km north through Africa and Europe in their Defenders, to reach the most northerly lighthouse in Europe, the Slettnes Lighthouse. Hot Cape to Cold Cape was a great team effort and a world-first geographic journey with purpose for the new Land Rover Defenders. At latitude 71.0894°N, the team shivered in freezing mist and rain at the base of the 117-year-old Slettnes Lighthouse, waiting for the “permanent sunshine” to reveal itself. After all, they were in “the Land of the Midnight Sun”.

A bit of a riddle arose soon after arrival: Was Nordkapp, the expedition's geographic end-point, the true northern-most point in Europe that one can drive to? Or is it the town of Mehamn (that claims to have the world's most northerly fuel station, bakery and pub), or is it the lighthouse close to the fishing village of Gamvik?

Elias, curator at the Gamvik museum explained the problem. "The Slettnes Lighthouse is the most northerly point you can drive to on mainland Europe. The difference is that Nordkapp is on an island called Magerøya which for centuries was only a point of reference for seafarers. But with the building of an undersea tunnel, Nordkapp is now the most northerly point you can drive to in Europe. 

"So now you can say you've driven to the two most northern points of Europe: one on the mainland and one on an island." Then he added: "If you want to do everything 'northern' on your way to Nordkapp, you must detour to Hammerfest, the world's most northern town!" 

Hammerfest turned out to be a busy coastal port, the bay lined with timber Norwegian houses reconstructed after WW2 and the team of 6 drove straight into a music festival in the town. At the waterfront there was a tribute to 'Polar Chef' Adolf Henrik Lindstrøm, born here in 1866. Lindstrøm played an essential role in Roald Adumsen's conquest of the South Pole in 1911 and later as crew member and chef on the first navigation of the North West Passage and other seafaring expeditions. Roald Amundsen wrote in his diary: 'He has rendered greater and more valuable services to the Norwegian polar expeditions than any other man.' 

The Scroll of Peace and Goodwill reads: 'Welcome to the most northern town in the world with 11,000 people and the most extreme weather (midnight sun and the darkest times) that's also known as 'Little New York' because of the 105 nationalities that live here. We also have the first Struve Meridian point that measured the diameter of the Earth and confirmed the world is not a perfect circle, it flattens out at the poles.” 

On SAFM this morning, Kingsley said: “We arrived in the midst of an unseasonal Arctic storm with howling winds, thick mist, freezing rain and near-zero temperatures. But despite the severe conditions and over 270 days of hard travel since leaving Cape Agulhas, it was an exciting moment for the entire team as we proudly flew the South African flag alongside the Norwegian flag at Nordkapp’s famous Globe monument, which marks the ‘top’ of the world.”

The team built a stone cairn on the Nordkapp cliffs topped with pebbles from Cape Agulhas, and symbolically emptied seawater collected from Africa’s southern tip where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet, which was carried through Africa in a Zulu calabash.  As with all Holgate expeditions, this Defender Transcontinental Expedition was also a journey of purpose. Travelling in three expedition-kitted new Land Rover Defenders, the six-member team conducted humanitarian work that assisted some 300,000 people along the expedition’s route through Africa.

The crossing of Africa was not without challenges, explained expedition leader and logistics expert Ross Holgate, Kingsley’s son. “Wars and uprisings across the breadth of North Africa meant that for the first time in decades, Africa was pretty much off-limits to overland travelers. We had to re-route to avoid the civil war in Ethiopia and travel through disputed territories between South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan. In doing so, we inadvertently became the first expedition in 30 years to cross Africa from south to north through the two Sudans.”

Upon reaching Europe, the expedition traveled through Greece, North Macedonia and the Western Balkan countries of Kosovo and Serbia, through Montenegro, to reach Hungary and Slovakia. Avoiding the war in Ukraine, the team took roads less travelled through eastern Poland close to the border with Belarus and into the Balkan states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. They then crossed the Baltic Sea and traversed the length of Finland, before crossing into Norway at the most northern border point in Europe.

The Defender Transcontinental Expedition, was the first real-life expedition test for Land Rover’s new Defenders outside South African borders, across two continents and over some of the most extreme terrain on Earth, undertaken by an experienced team that has already completed 39 grueling expeditions to every country on the African continent and beyond – many of them world firsts.

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