The 2010 FIFA World Cup kicks off in South Africa on 11 June, if you didn’t already know that (ahem). But what with volcanic ash clouds and BA strikes you might be wondering if there are any alternative routes to the Rainbow Nation. John Hillman looks at the options.

Getting to South Africa by land would constitute and adventure of such Livingstonian proportions, that only the very bravest consumer of Ray Mears survival DVDs would cogitate on an attempt at the 6000 miles between Dover and Cape Town.

The easy part is, of course, getting from England to the continent, via any one of P&O Ferries’ 25 crossings a day from Dover to Calais. From there it’s just a matter of heading down through France, across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain and down, down, down all the way to the port town of Algeciras on the southern Atlantic coast. Then it gets interesting.

From here your journey will take you through at least ten separate countries, which include some of the poorest on the planet. You will possibly experience the unnerving sensation of driving through the middle of a country in the grips of civil war, encounter official corruption on a truly epic scale, and spend most of your time wondering where your next tank of petrol is coming from.

However, you’ll also discover that some of the happiest and friendliest people in the world are those who have very little, experience sights and sounds that will stay with you forever, and develop an arsenal of pub stories to rival even the combined force of Lord Nelson and Lemmy from Motorhead.

So in answer to the question, yes you can drive to South Africa 2010, you just should have started planning it a bit sooner than now. As far as we are aware no-one is actually driving from the UK to SA. However if you know of anyone en-route then please do let us know, just so we may marvel at their refreshing disregard for modern utilitarianism.

Image Credit: 300td.org

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