Poles of Inconvenience
The Poles of Inconvenience: Europe Edition is back this July.
Get your hands on the crappiest car you can muster. Summon your least sensible mates. Spend three ridiculous weeks getting lost and stuck trying to reach as many poles as possible.
Each pole will be a carefully crafted nugget of chaos, waiting to slap you about the chops with old school adventure. They’ll be spread across three continents, seven mountain ranges and three deserts. They could be anywhere from the Arctic circle in northern Norway to a lonely Western Saharan ghost town. Or way over to the east halfway along Turkey’s famous mountain pass cliff danglers.
You’ll get points for every POI you reach. The more splendidly inconvenient the pole, the more points you’ll rack up.
We’ll be tracking you on the live map, updating the rolling leaderboard and dishing out daily updates from Adventurists HQ.
The Rules
1. Drive the most unsuitable vehicle you can get your hands. No specific size or age rules, but if you take a vehicle we deem too suitable you will be punished.
2. No set route. Bag as many Poles of Inconvenience as you can in any order you like. There’s no minimum or maximum, where you go is entirely up to you.
3. If you get stuck, get yourself un-stuck. This is an unsupported adventure. If we helped you it wouldn’t be a proper adventure. So you have to wipe your own bum bums at all times.
4. Raise at least £500 for the official charity Cool Earth. The world would be shit without jungles, so the POI Rally is raising money for this outrageously effective bunch of rainforest protecting legends.
Machines of Mirth
This rally is a proper adventure. That means you don’t know what’s going to happen next, or whether you’ll make it anywhere near the place you’re aiming for that day, or any day. If you were guaranteed to make it you’d be on a holiday, not an adventure.
It’s nothing short of adventuring blasphemy to bring a big well prepared 4×4 on an adventure. You need to be piloting a mayhem-machine so shit that you spend your waking hours wondering if you will make it just one more metre.
Cars must be unsuitable for the task ahead and generally considered to be crap. Aim for small and old.
Motorbikes – find a machine a small child would be embarrassed to ride.
The Dates
The Poles of Inconvenience 2024 schedule is set. Here are your adventuring dates of destiny…
14th July: Poles of Inconvenience network of chaos is open for business
3rd August: Finish line open for glorious arrivals plus official finish party at Junktown, near Prague.
7th August: Champion of Inconvenience 2024 announced and all other prize winners confirmed.
Saving the World
The world would be shit without jungles. They are a vital resource for getting lost and stuck and having adventures. And for other important things like humans being able to breathe. So the official charity is Cool Earth, who do an incredible job protecting rainforests around the world by supporting the local indigenous communities stave off the greedy knobs that want to chop them all down and turn them into wardrobes.
Every team has to raise a minimum of £500, and thus the Poles of Inconvenience Rally helps to actually save the world a bit. Anything over £500 can be donated to a registered charity of your choice. But we’d recommend sticking with the official charity, because they’re legends doing legendary work.