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ACTION STATIONS MOTOR MOUTH PERFECT 10

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ACTIVEVauxhall Magazine; Summer 2007

ACTION STATIONSACTION STATIONS

 

05. Walks Of Faith
Pilgrimages not only test faith, but endurance too. On the Japanese island of Shikoku, Buddhist devotees trek some 960 miles to visit 88 temples. Islam asks able-bodied Muslims to take part in the Hajj - a pilgrimage to Mecca - at least once in their lives. And every year millions do. Likewise, Hindus flock in their millions to the temples at Tirupati. And Rome has been a centre for Christian pilgrimage since 330AD, when Emperor Constantine ordered the building of St Peter's Basilica on Vatican Hill.

06. Pedal For The Skies
In 1959, British philanthropist Henry Kremer offered a prize to encourage the idea of human-powered flight. Since then people have been pedalling hard to claim the Kremer Prize (now worth £150,000) by flying a 26-mile course in under an hour. Greek cycling champion Kanellos Kanellopoulos has flown a record 74 miles in a straight line, but his pedal-powered Daedalus 88 was just 30 feet from shore at Santorini when a gust of wind forced it into the sea, leaving its pilot to swim the rest.

07. Time for tee
Keen golfers will go almost anywhere to swing a nine iron, but for those eager to find a fairway that's further afield than most, there's now a course in the remote Kingdom of Bhutan. Royal Thimphu is situated near a monastery in the rugged little principality squeezed between India and China. Apparently, being happy is a legal requirement in Bhutan. Not hitting a bunker on its only golf course is one way to achieve this.

08. On Yer Bike!
In 1960, aged 20, German Heinz Stucke pedalled through 20 countries and covered 17,000km. Two years later he set off again and by the dawn of the new millennium, he'd got through 192 countries, 15 passports, travelled 335,000km and won the Guinness Book of Records title of 'Most Travelled Man in History'. Last year he headed for Greenland via Portsmouth - where someone stole his bike.

09. Don't Give Up The Day Job
Extreme age is apparently no barrier to working for a living. Constance Brown, 98, has been battering cod in Brown's fish and chip shop in Pembroke since 1928, picking up an MBE and an 'Oldest Fish Fryer in Great Britain' gong. And London centenarian Buster Harris still cleans vans for a plumbing firm, while 103-year-old Dorset pub gardener Jim Webber's tools include a chainsaw.

10. Take A Deep Breath
Forget Titanic-style, sea-floor submersibles, the deepest sea dive made using just a wet suit and flipper power is apparently 330 metres - ten metres more than the height of the Eiffel Tower. It took Frenchman Pascal Bernabe about ten minutes to reach this depth off Corsica in 2005, then 529 more for a staged ascent to avoid 'the bends'. He spent three years planning the dive and used 20 cylinders of various gases on his way back to the surface. Such problems don't bother the Cuvier beaked whale, which can dive to almost 1900 metres for up to 85 minutes. Show off.