Back in the 1980s I joined 153 Club, a bunch of Saharan enthusiasts who’d travelled in the area covered by the Michelin 153 map (below). In fact, iirc, having been there was a condition of membership.

I joined in the hope of getting useful travel information from in the three-monthly newsletters and meeting active Saharans, but there wasn’t much of either. My recollection was more of a reunion group of former Minitrek tour clients (an early overland company), plus a few others. I attended a couple of club meetings in Wimbledon, sent in occasional reports, then went my own way, though I got to know ex-driver Mike Foster a bit. He wrote a book called Sai Bilma in 1991 about joining the salt caravan to Bilma.
Some of the livelier reports in the newsletter (as opposed to reminiscences), came from a chap called Alisdair Kennedy, a schoolteacher from the former Shorefields School in Dingle, Liverpool (now King’s Leadership Academy, no less) who led summertime school trips out to Algeria and beyond, using cantankerous ex-army 4×4 trucks. It was writing up the mid-80s Imps trike fiasco which made me recall Kennedy and his similar youth-oriented adventures.
He first organised a trip to the Sahara in 1967 as a student at Durham University. Then once he was a teacher carried this on. As far as I know the kids’ parents had to pay for it and once there, they were fully involved in keeping things moving, as well as taking small-group mini overnighters into the Hoggar which became a home from home for the many expeditions, before heading further south.

Over 25 years over 300 kids from Shorefields and other schools got to experience a central Saharan adventure and now there’s a WordPress blog recalling those expeditions, along with a few YouTube vids and photo galleries. It’s worth repeating these long trips took place in the school’s summer holidays when the Sahara and Sahel are a lot balmier than Merseyside.
Many of the reports describe strange weather phenomena common at this time of year, including strange, windless mists of fine dust rolling over the camp or vehicles, shrouding visibility just before the main sandstorm struck, often ending in a brief rainstorm and, on one occasion, followed by heightened levels of static electricity when merely touching metal would give you a zap.

The soundless vid of the 1973 above trip went all the way down the Hoggar route to Agadez in Niger, and back up the Tanezrouft via Tessalit in Mali to Reggane and back to Ceuta – in mid summer all jammed in the back of a poorly ventilated ex-army Austin K9 radio wagon and ambulance. By the time they got to wet season Niger they were running with the bonnet’s off to help shed heat, but the 4-litre petrol sixes still suffered from vapour lock. And you imagine a whole lot more. Back then that’s what desert overlanding was – a lurch from one breakdown to another that, along with your health, was pushed to the limit by the intense heat, dust and Sahelian humidity.

The 1971 trip (pics, report, vids above) sounded especially gruelling, staying entirely in the desert for weeks. On this one an 88″ Landrover accompanied the Austin K9 and a similar Morris truck. Having come from Djanet via Tam and the Aïr, in Agadez, they’d run out of time to visit Kano in northern Nigeria, but got an offer to join some French heading across the Tenere to Dirkou. It was sort of on the way back north and a loop I did, but in a couple of trips.
Passing the still then extant Arbre Tenere, after a visit to Jerome’s fuel depot in Dirkou (bragging, as he always did with Brits (like me 33 years later) about fighting with Monty in WWII), they set off alone for Djanet along the desolate balised Berliet piste. The intense heat combined with crappy fuel from Jerome’s played havoc with the Morris which was down to 2mpg – so bad the Landrover had to shoot ahead to Djanet to bring back more fuel. Like the 1973 film, the end of Part 2 video rushes to the end and skips most of this drama.
At such times the best place to be was probably in you baggy M&S jocks clinging on to the pitching truck cab’s roof!

A few stills below from the YT vids. More on the WP blog.