Club Meeting. Guest Speaker: Elisabeth Smits – “Classic Striders – How Did We Ever Think This Was a Good Idea?”

Elisabeth Smits – Mrs Strider.
Classic Striders

“How Did We Ever Think This Was a Good Idea?”

Come and join me as I tell the story of how Fred and I somehow managed to turn a really rather stupid idea into an eleven year, approximately 266,000 km adventure around the world in our 1957 Mercedes-Benz 220S, “Abel,” towing our little tent-trailer, “Zambezi.”

Back in 2014, we decided that taking a 66-year-old car around the world, unsupported, was perfectly sensible. We were both already in our sixties, so obviously we had nothing better to do!

What started as an adventure has taken us through the USA and Canada, Mexico and Central America, 3 years in South America, three years in Europe, and eventually to New Zealand and Africa. Along the way we have discovered that an old Mercedes is remarkably capable—but also that travelling around the world in a 66-year-old car is not always quite as straightforward as the brochure suggests!

In my presentation, I will take you behind the scenes: how we got the idea, how we prepared ourselves, Abel and Zambezi, and what it is really like living on the road for years at a time.