At last, a small shipment of the digitally printed VDEG

There are scant few books that are universally recognized as the timeless bibles in their respective fields: Adlard Coles’s Heavy Weather Sailing; Jack O’Connor’s The Rifle Book; Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking, Olaus Murie’s A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, to name a few.

Tom Sheppard’s Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide belongs firmly in that category.

I feel free to say this even though I have been its co-author since 2016, because the VDEG’s reputation was established long before my contributions—in 1998, when Tom Sheppard published the first, hardbound edition in conjunction with Land Rover.

I’d been devouring Tom’s articles on his Sahara explorations for several years by then, and when I read about the just-released book I drove 120 miles to Scottsdale, Arizona, to the Range Rover dealership there—the only outlet in the state—and stood in line at the counter behind a woman who had just bought a Range Rover and was agonizing over the choice of some rhino or leopard-themed accessory. I took my copy home and read it cover to cover.

Soon thereafter, Tom took over the publishing, after which the contents no longer leaned nearly exclusively toward Land Rovers and the relevance of the book expanded hugely.

In 2010, after corresponding with Tom through my position as editor of Overland Journal, Roseann and I met him at his home north of London. In sharp contrast to the brash personality one would expect of an ex-RAF test pilot and RGS Ness Award recipient, we found a charming, self-deprecating man who loved sitting in his upstairs office watching sheep graze in the field below as much as he did exploring Algeria solo and completely off-tracks. We became friends, and in 2015 I was gobsmacked to be asked to share to cover of VDEG.

We maintain a regular, lively correspondence which continues to inspire me to want to be Tom Sheppard when I grow up. He recently sent photos of the new driving lamps he’d just installed on his BMW motorcycle, the better to be able to blast around the back roads near Hitchin.

Tom’s next birthday, by the way, will be his 90th.

To the book: If you have a copy, you are already familiar with the stupendous depth of its information, spread over 620 pages—four-plus pounds worth. Unlike many of the bibles listed above, VDEG receives continual updates with each printing, even if minor. Thus information on vehicles, drivetrains, international shipping, communications, and navigation are always up to the minute in accuracy and relevance. Whether you’re planning a week-long exploration of your own state, or have been tasked with leading a multi-vehicle scientific expedition across the Sahara, the Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide contains the knowledge you need.

If you don’t own a copy, you should. If you already do, and it’s a post-2016 (Edition 4) version with the new guy on the cover, you’ll find mostly updates to existing information. The big change since then came with Edition 5, which transitioned to sharp, all-digital printing and a larger, easier-to-read (and heavier!) format. It’s a worthy upgrade. The print runs, however, are small—we have just 90 copies and no word whether there will be further ones. I should have said 89 copies, because I’m saving one for myself . . .

Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide, 5th edition

The very first Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide was published in 1998, in association with Land Rover, in a hardbound format with color photos. These first editions now sell for many times the original price.

Once Tom Sheppard took over publication on his own, with his one-man Desert Winds Publishing, he opted for a more affordable, soft-bound book with black-and-white photos. But the information contained within remained head and shoulders above any similar publication that followed it. This was due more than anything else to Tom’s background as a test pilot for the RAF, and his predilection for solo travel in the depths of the Sahara—each of them activities that punished carelessness and lack of preparation harshly.  Thus VDEG (“veedeg”), as aficionados refer to it, didn’t simply offer advice on driving techniques, what to pack, and the best camp cot. The sections within also covered vehicle and team selection, vehicle modifications both recommended and not, fuel types and grades, oil viscosities, water, shipping, cooking and food, loading and lashing, communications, navigation, and much more. 

The same test-pilot attention to detail drove Tom to regularly produce new editions and sub-editions to keep the book current on rapidly advancing technology, leading some of his fans to tease him about an upcoming “Edition 4.1-6a (3t).” They certainly weren’t done in an attempt to squeeze more profit from the book; Tom could have saved much work by skipping several iterations and few would have noticed. 

I remember well our first meeting in 2009, after corresponding for a couple of years when I was the executive editor at Overland Journal. While Tom had always been charming via email, Roseann and I nevertheless arrived at his house north of London expecting someone imbued with at least a touch of the Top Gun attitude. 

Nothing could have been further from reality. We were greeted by a slender man approaching his eighties but thirtyish spry, somehow six feet tall yet at the same time elfin. And he was if anything more charming in real life, and in the comfort of his home bore more resemblance to a slightly absent-minded Oxford professor than a death-defying test pilot; given to exclaiming, “Oh dear,” when he spilled the sugar or forgot to put out cakes with the tea. Roseann fell hard and fast, and he and I developed a lasting friendship in addition to an effortless working relationship.

In 2015 I was shocked and humbled when Tom Sheppard asked me to be the co-author of the 4th edition of the Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide. There was good reason for him to ask someone on this side of the Pond: Overland travel had exploded in the U.S., along with hundreds of new products. As well, vehicles were changing and so were recovery equipment and techniques. Tom relied on patience and the simplest tools for recovery on his solo Sahara drives, eschewing complexities such as winches (which would benefit from scant anchor points deep in the dune fields). 

That 4th edition took the better part of six months for the pair of us to completely revise and update, and for me to add a bunch of information on equipment with which Tom had no familiarity and, in some cases, little desire to have any (50-liter fridges, Tom?). We argued about his atavistic fondness for tubed tires; I lobbied for tubeless tires, plug kits, and Tyrepliers. In the end we each had a say. He let me write entirely new sections on winching and Hi-Lift (and, later, ARB) jacks, which later he also incorporated into his Four-by-four Driving, a comprehensive guide used by military special forces on at least two continents. 

By the time we were finished, VDEG had grown by something like 50 pages and about a pound. And for the first two months during which Roseann and I were the North American distributors, I did little else but pack and ship VDEGs. Subsequent 4-point-something reprints incorporated the usual worthwhile Sheppard-esque detail updates, but remained similar.

Now comes the 5th edition of VDEG. This time, Tom took a deep breath and enlarged both the format and font size, making for easier reading—and, given several updated/expanded sections, also making for a book that now weighs a tick over four pounds. Perhaps even more significantly, for the first time the 5th edition is printed digitally, which has bumped the clarity and contrast in the images noticeably. Despite this, the price has risen just $5, the first price increase in six years.

Also—perhaps—significantly, this is a very limited print run. We received just 75 copies; Tom kept a similar number for Europe and elsewhere.

I always feel justified in boasting about VDEG; after all I was a fan long before I became a co-author. I remember driving 120 miles to the Land Rover dealer in Scottsdale to buy my first copy, and waiting in line while the woman ahead of me agonized over whether she wanted the leopard or elephant tire cover for her new Discovery. The book was worth the wait and the price. It still is.

Order from our shop, here.

The saga of JUE 477, first production Land Rover

A new book published by Porter Press International tells one of the most fascinating and unlikely tales in the history of the Land Rover: the saga of the very first production vehicle, 860001 (the title refers to its registration plate, JUE 477).

The vehicle was intended for presentation to King George VI, but instead wound up working for a living on farms and mining sites. A farmer named David Fairless bought it 22 years later for the estimable sum of £15, and let it sit in a field until 1998, when on a whim he trailered it to the Series 1 Club’s 50th anniversary rally. When the rally’s attendees realized the import of the 860001 serial number Fairless was deluged with offers, and he stashed the Land Rover in a barn. Not until after his death was 860001 sold—to Sir James Ratcliff, a Land Rover aficionado and more recently the founder of Ineos, the soon-to-be manufacturer of the Grenadier, the spiritual successor to the Defender, and by extension, 860001.

The 128-page book by Martin Port contains 240 photographs, from historical images through a complete documentation of JUE 477’s careful restoration. 

Porter Press is here.

Tom Sheppard's Four-by-Four Driving, 5th Edition

Can you learn to be a better 4x4 driver from a book?

The answer is yes. And no.

Don’t stop reading, because that’s not an evasion. 

The “no” part of the answer is easy to explain. Simply put, nothing can substitute for having an experienced human instructor in the seat next to you, or outside your open window, to give you second-by-second advice on your control inputs and choice of lines. Not long ago I watched Tim Hüber stand next the the driver’s window of a Range Rover while he had the owner repeatedly back up and slowly inch over a soccer-ball-sized boulder. Back and forth, back and forth. The aim was to hone the driver’s ability to gently ease over an obstacle or down a ledge, rather than bouncing and compressing the suspension, which reduces ground clearance and increases the chances of contacting bodywork. The fellow finally nailed it, and negotiated the following driving course with consummate grace. I can think of dozens of other instances I’ve watched (or, indeed, have experienced as a student), with such skilled and patient instructors as Sarah Batten, Graham Jackson, or any of the ex-Camel Trophy team members who’ve taught at the Overland Expo for a decade now. 

Having a live instructor is especially vital when learning to drive in conditions new to you, or more extreme than you’ve experienced before. This applies to such procedures as driving on side slopes, negotiating steep hill descents or difficult climbs, and similar situations where inexperience might either make you overconfident (unlikely), or too timid to fully exploit the capabilities of your vehicle.

However. You can significantly enhance your level of preparedness for that personal instruction by reading the right book. And I know of none better than Tom Sheppard’s Four-by-Four Driving. I’ll offer full disclosure right now: I wrote the chapter on winches and winching, and the section on the Hi-Lift jack, for this and the previous edition. But that’s a fraction of what this book is about.

(And in case you think you’re beyond such a primer, note that Four-by-Four Driving is the mandatory textbook for several trainers I know who contract with two governments to teach Special Forces operators advanced driving and recovery techniques.) 

Why is it so good? I think the answer lies largely in the fact that Sheppard was a test pilot in the RAF before he took to solo exploration of the Sahara. And when you’re flying an experimental jet aircraft, poor preparation and bad driving won’t just get you stuck—it will get you killed. Thus Tom insists that a thorough knowledge of the vehicle itself, and especially its driveline and four-wheel-drive system, is the key to being an effective driver. Think of it in terms of a maxim:

If you don’t know how the vehicle operates, you won’t be able to operate the vehicle. The more you know about how it operates, the more effective an operator you will be.

For this reason, a full 20 percent of Four-by-Four Driving is devoted to an exhaustive look into the drivetrains and systems of vehicles from the Suzuki Jimny up to and including the Bentley Bentayga. While you might be tempted to find your own model in here and only read about that, don’t. Learning about other approaches will help you understand both the strengths and weaknesses of your own ride. Besides, if you ever have the opportunity—or need—to drive something foreign to you, you’ll look like a hero if you hop in and immediately turn that LR4’s Terrain Response dial to the proper setting—or, for that matter, are aware that you’ll need to get out and lock the hubs on that Troopy before pulling back on the transfer-case lever.

Just a partial table of contents

The driving section then begins with another vital subject: mechanical sympathy; that is, how to drive with awareness of the vehicle and the right touch to avoid stressing or breaking it. Further discussions cover suspension articulation, low range and when to use or not use it, throttle and brake control, followed by extensive sections on types of terrain and the techniques used in each: sand, mud, tracks, deep ruts, rocks, water. What is the correct way to ascend or descend or traverse a steep slope? To cross a deep ditch or sharp ridge? Negotiate snow or ice? It’s all in here.

The following extensive section is all about recovery, both assisted and solo, and includes an utterly brilliant chapter on winching. :-) A short but fascinating chapter on advanced driving covers such arcane skills as changing from low to high range on the move, or driving a non-synchro transmission—just in case you ever get the chance to take a Bedford RL on safari. There are also useful sections on trailer towing for those of you with adventure-type trailers.

That would be a complete book, but Tom continues with a section on expedition basics—sort of a flash introduction to the last word on the subject, his Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide—as well as sections on loading and lashing, equipment, fuels, oils, tyre repair, and vehicle selection for expeditions.

That front section, however, is why you should buy this book. For the fifth edition Tom immersed himself in the latest models and technology and updated anything that remotely hinted at being past its sell-by date. There’s even a brief flash of a disguised Rolls-Royce Cullinan careening along the face of a sand dune, with a typical Sheppard wise-cracking caption: “No, your Ladyship, the brake is on the LEFT! And Rolls is the marque, not the aim.”

Read this book. Then go get some professional instruction. I’ll bet you at some point your instructor will look over at you and say, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

More VDEGs have arrived . . . now includes photo addendum

We've finally received a new shipment of the Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide. It is essentially the same book as edition 4, with a few minor updates here and there and, importantly, the inclusion of the Expedition Photo Gear addendum, which was formerly a small separate publication. Printed in color (the first time color has appeared in a VDEG edition since the original, collector's-item hardcover), the 16-page addendum is a brief guide to choosing an expedition camera system—and getting the most from it. The price of this "Edition 4.1" will stay $75, despite the additional color section. 

4x4 Driving by Tom Sheppard, Edition 4

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How do you review a book to which you made a small, but full-disclosure-needed, contribution? One way might be to simply avoid reviewing the bits you contributed, so that’s what I’m going to try here.

Tom Sheppard’s classic and comprehensive book on four-wheel-drive technique had its genesis in 1993 as the hard-bound The Land Rover Experience—a User’s Guide to Four-wheel Driving, sponsored by the manufacturer. I picked up a 1994 second edition, which I still own. Despite its exclusive focus on Land Rover vehicles, as an exhaustive and authoritative guide to four-wheel-drive technique in general it was like nothing I’d seen. By that time I’d owned a Land Cruiser for 15 years, had negotiated some of the most difficult trails in my region, and was using it to lead sea kayak tours to remote beaches in Mexico, yet many of the lessons—especially those dealing with driving in sand—were instantly useful.

Of course 1994 was the Paleolithic in terms of four-wheel-drive technology. Electronic traction control, then a brand new feature on Range Rovers, barely merited a sixty-word paragraph. Axle differential locks weren’t mentioned (not surprising, given that Land Rover has yet—in 2016—to embrace the feature). Hill-descent control? Electronically disconnectible anti-roll bars? Not even invented yet.

Flash forward to 1999, when Tom’s own nascent one-man publishing company, Desert Winds, took over production of the book, and the title was changed to Off-roader Driving and, in 2006, to Four-by-four Driving. Printing was changed to soft cover and monochrome to hold down the price, but each time the contents were thoroughly updated to explain the latest in four-wheel-drive systems and technology, until in the current, fourth edition, it takes up nearly a third of the book.

Why? As Tom puts it on the back cover, “ITDS.” It’s The Driveline, Stupid. Understanding how your vehicle works—how it converts engine power into traction on the ground, or how it can fail to do so—is absolutely critical knowledge if you want to exploit its full potential. Whenever I hand someone a copy of Four-by-four Driving, I say, “Don’t skip the first two chapters!” From explaining how an open differential works to investigating the astonishing traction-control system of the $250,000 Bentley Bentayga, Tom describes each advance and feature with the thoroughness one would expect from a former RAF test pilot—not sparing the criticism where necessary.

The driving sections, too, are set apart from similar books, chiefly by the overarching Golden Rule practiced by someone who has driven thousands of miles completely off-tracks in the Sahara, solo: Mechanical Sympathy. Everything from accelerating to braking is discussed with consideration for the vehicle as the number one priority. Learn the lessons here and you’ll not only be able to drive places you couldn’t before; you’ll do it with a lack of drama that will mark you as an accomplished operator. The analogy I like to use is of a pool player who has become fairly proficient at the game and shows off by slamming balls into pockets, versus the real pro who drops each ball in with a whisper, and sets his cue ball up perfectly for the next shot. Ascending and descending steep slopes, side slopes, water crossings, ice and snow, rocks, ditches—all covered.

Four-by-four Driving then goes on to a discourse in vehicle recovery, and much of this section I’ll let you critique on your own since I contributed the sections on Hi-Lift jack use and winching. Sheppard, you see, mostly eschews such crutches while playing around solo in the Algerian desert.

There is a further, valuable, advanced driving section, a primer on driving with trailers, and a useful introduction to expedition basics.

Criticism? Okay, a small one: In the last edition of the Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide Tom allowed me to debate his, um, stubborn adherence to tube-type tires for heavy-duty expedition use. There’s no such second opinion in Four-by-four Driving, so I’ll restate here that I believe tubeless tires have surpassed tubed equivalents for virtually all practical use. A significant majority of tire problems in the field—even in remote regions—involves simple punctures, which with a tubed tire require complete breakdown to repair. A tubeless tire can be durably fixed with a plug in a couple of minutes without even removing the wheel from the vehicle, and if more extensive work is needed a Tyreplier and a set of tire irons will facilitate everything up to and including complete removal from the wheel. Any properly equipped expedition vehicle will be carrying a compressor capable of reseating the beads, so the overall time and effort spent on tire repairs is hugely reduced. There, I did my reviewer’s duty. 

So—okay, I contributed a tiny section; yes, we sell this book on the Exploring Overland site. But Four-by-four Driving is simply too important to ignore for reasons of vested interest. If you are seriously interested in becoming a better backcountry driver, it’s a worthwhile investment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go, because as I was skimming through the book to review it I found some stuff I, er, need to get caught up on.

$45 well spent. Find it here. Need I add it would make an excellent Christmas Present? 

Now it can be told . . .

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Bear with me for a bit? Sometime in the early 1980s I happened across an intriguing article in a U.S. four-wheel-drive magazine. In it was a photo of a fellow standing in a sandy expanse of desert, next to a very early Range Rover. A line bisected two words scrawled in the sand: ‘Mali’ and ‘Algeria.’ The fellow leaned on a shovel, apparently the tool used to scribe this middle-of-nowhere border.

That was my introduction to Tom Sheppard, ex-Royal Air Force test pilot and the leader of the first west-to-east crossing of the Sahara Desert, the Joint Services Expedition, in 1975. In the years to come I followed his (frequently solo) excursions through the most isolated regions of the Algerian Sahara, often completely off-tracks. In 1999, when I heard he had published a book called Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide that would be available at Land Rover dealers, I drove 120 miles to the swank showroom in Scottsdale, and stood in line to pay for a copy behind wealthy urbanite Range Rover buyers picking out Africa-themed spare tire covers.

Fast forward eight or nine years, when I was fortunate enough to work with Tom during my time as editor of Overland Journal. A year or so later, Roseann and I had the opportunity to meet him on a trip to England. To my amazement, there was not a trace of the ex-test-pilot-Sahara-explorer-RGS-medal-winner arrogance I would have expected. Instead, we were welcomed by a quiet, humorous, and steadfastly self-effacing man who doted on the horses and sheep that grazed on the farmland adjacent to his modest cottage. Over the next few visits we became friends.

Fast forward again to 2014. We’d been trying to convice Tom to publish a fourth edition of VDEG (‘veedeg,’ as he and everyone refers to Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide). The third edition had sold out in half the time he expected. He agreed it was needed—but then sent me a mockup of the proposed cover, which (as you can see from the header image) was a complete shock. 

So now, after seven months of exhaustive research and writing on both Tom’s and my part, I can announce that the fourth edition of Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide, by Tom Sheppard and Jonathan Hanson (woo hoo!) will be out in mid-May, with copies also available at the Overland Expo. This edition has received the most extensive updating and expanding since the original, with much more content specifically relevant to North American readers than in previous editions. Total content is up by nearly 20 percent—it's now a 600-page book.

Any verbose attempt on my part to explain what an honor this is would be futile. So I’ll just say I’m thrilled and humbled to have contributed in a very minor way to a classic in the field of expedition literature. If you don’t yet own a copy of VDEG, or if you have previous editions and need to complete your collection, please follow this link and put your name on the waiting list. As before, VDEG 4 will be produced by Tom’s one-man publishing enterprise, Desert Winds, and quantities will be limited.

Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide, fourth edition

It’s confirmed! The fourth edition of Tom Sheppard’s overlanding and expedition travel bible, the Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide, is coming this spring. 

Since its first iteration in 1999, VDEG, as it’s known colloquially, has been an indispensable resource for anyone considering vehicle-based adventure travel, whether it’s for a family vacation or a six-month scientific expedition. There are over 500 pages of dense information, and multiple photographs, charts, and graphs on virtually every page. Some of the subjects investigated include:

• Vehicle selection
• Vehicle modifications and accessories
• Electrical power
• Camping equipment
• Clothing and footwear
• Cooking and food
• Water
• Navigation
• Communications
• Shipping
• Team selection

 . . . and more. Whether you read it end to end (a daunting task!) or refer to relevant chapters as you need them, you’ll find decades of expedition experience from which to learn. 

Every previous edition of Vehicle-dependent Expedition Guide has sold out, with the result that used or hoarded copies sell for far more than their original price (a fact that annoys Tom and was much of the impetus for the new effort).

The fourth edition is being updated and expanded significantly, and, for the first time, extensive information relevant to North American overlanders is also incorporated. This will certainly be the most comprehensive and useful VDEG yet. However, once again the print run is limited, as Tom Sheppard runs a one-man publishing company. If you’d like to be informed when the book is out, please use this link and add your name and contact information.

For more about Tom Sheppard and the detailed and majestic books he creates, check out the Desert Winds Publishing website.