VAN ON A MISSION

I get a pile of correspondence land in my mailbox with the subject title, ‘this will make a good feature’. Nine times out of ten the heart-warming story accompanying it makes me smile and provides great content for a ‘reader’s ride’ or a snippet in news. But when an email arrived from Guy Deacon CBE with a link to a short, professionally-made film by Rob Haywood it made me down my tea mug and hurriedly want to find out more.

The footage showed a determined looking Guy stare directly into the camera lens and tell viewers he’d got Parkinson’s and was driving his T5.1 California solo overland from the UK to South Africa.

To say watching it was moving is an understatement.

I learnt from the clip that his motivation to do it was twofold; to prove someone with a progressive nervous system disorder could do it, and additionally highlight the plight of people with Parkinson’s across Africa and the horrendous stigma they face on