In his book 'The 1968 London to Sydney Marathon', Robert Connor has covered the events that occurred after the Schellenberg Bentley had fallen to the bottom of the ravine in Turkey. Here is an extract:

After a grueling couple of hours, the yellow 1800 arrived at Erzincan and David was directed to the local hospital where Graham was quickly admitted, joining the injured Doug Morris from the Vauxhall Ventora team. Eventually the doctors diagnosed kidney damage, which required emergency treatment and a period of recovery before Graham would be allowed home. No. 65 would not be continuing in the Marathon and so thoughts turned to what John and David should do next.

The answer came in the form of Keith Schellenberg, who was also in Erzincan with his team member Norman Barclay. Having seen the injured Patrick Lindsay off on a plane back to England, they had begun to resign themselves to the fact that the old Bentley would have to be left at the bottom of the ravine back on the track to Sivas. Listening to this tale of woe, David struck upon an idea—at the hospital, an officer from the Turkish Army had wanted a photograph with the two injured Marathon competitors and had seen it as his responsibility to make sure both Graham and Doug received the best possible care. Couldn’t they call upon him to help recover the Bentley? As David recalled, “John and I rushed along with Schellenberg to see this chap back at these bloody great barracks. The bloke said yes and he got out tank recovery vehicles, so off we went—a great convoy of vehicles, all armed!” Upon returning to the crash site, they discovered that the car was being guarded by a group of locals who at first refused to step down, despite the military presence. Eventually, after a tense standoff, during which David recalled that shots were definitely fired, the group beat a hasty retreat and the Bentley was hauled back up the bank and onto the road. To their surprise, apart from a broken windshield and a couple of bent fenders, there was very little damage. David fashioned a makeshift windshield and pulled the fenders free from the front wheels and Keith started the engine. It ran, so the party returned to Erzincan to consider their next move. A call to Hy- Mac gave them their answer—why not continue to Bombay anyway? Perhaps they might be allowed to continue on to Australia? After all, the 1800 was still in excellent condition so, after conferring, it was agreed that John would remain with Graham and make sure he was successfully transferred back to Britain while Norman, Keith and David would carry on to Bombay.

Before the Marathon began, David had stocked up on Benzedrine to help keep them awake when they were driving so, with a dose of the drug administered, Norman set off at the wheel of the Bentley with David and Keith following in the 1800. David ensured that he didn’t travel too close to the Bentley’s tail, just in case the effects of the medication wore off and he found himself dozing at the wheel. The next stop would be Teheran, capital city of Iran, some 860 miles away, but it wasn’t long before the Bentley was in trouble again as, rounding a corner, David found the vintage car slumped at the side of the road with a wheel missing. A quick search located the missing item and its stub- axle in a field nearby, so they quickly retrieved them, carried out repairs as best they could and fitted the Bentley’s extra wheel. In this fashion, they finally arrived at the now disbanded checkpoint at the Philips factory in Teheran where they were able to call upon a team of mechanics who painstakingly welded the stub- axle, refitted the bearings and got the old car ready for the next leg of the journey into Afghanistan.

David recalled that the Bentley’s brakes weren’t very effective and, as they would now be driving into the mountains, they devised a means of ensuring that the car would always be able to stop. As David explained, “Whenever we came to a hill, to slow it down, we put the 1800 in front and used that as a brake!” Continuing to use their pace notes, they decided to try and keep up a steady 80 or 90 mph in the hope that they might catch the field ahead of them. On they went out of the mountains and into the desert, both cars experiencing the effects of corrugation, the intermittent ridging caused by traffic over sandy roads and tracks. Travelling in convoy along the desert track at speed led them to decide that it would be wise to keep a good distance between the two cars, the Bentley in front and the 1800 bringing up the rear. After a while, David noticed that, in the distance, something was wrong. He recalled that “Keith was driving the Bentley, Norman was asleep in the back of the 1800 and some way ahead, I saw the Bentley stopped with two or three people around it. So I woke Norman up and said there’s some problem up ahead. Something just worried me a bit so we stopped and it was dark. We rolled the car up reasonably close and walked up.” As they approached, David was thankful that John had included a pistol in the gear they had loaded into the 1800, even if he hadn’t thought to tell them of this until they had arrived at the Le Bourget control. Standing next to the Bentley was a man brandishing a rifle and demanding that Keith hand over his diesel. As David recalled, Keith was sitting in the Bentley saying “But my good man, this isn’t a diesel car!” David and Norman carefully approached the two men from behind,one of whom was now waving a container in the air and continuing to demand that it be filled with diesel. David raised the pistol, fired a shot into the air and the two men fled into the desert. Understandably, the Bentley and the 1800 were very quickly on their way again.

Eventually, the Bentley stopped running as they drove through India, which meant that, while the 1800 arrived at Bombay under its own power, the older car made its entrance into the city on the back of a truck. With both cars secured at a local garage, David and Keith quickly received confirmation that No. 65 and No. 84 had officially been disqualified from the Marathon. While Keith made arrangements for the Bentley to be shipped back to Britain, David began to hatch another plan. What if he could try and break the record for the fastest solo drive from Bombay back to London? Another call to Hy- Mac and the plan was set. All that was needed now was for the 1800 to be checked over and serviced, so David approached the proprietor of the garage where they had parked both cars. Could he do the work? Yes, he could, although he would need to move the 1800 to another of his sites, and would David like to go duck hunting with him while the BMC was being made ready? Thus, while his car was being worked on, David found himself hunting ducks in Nashik, approximately 100 miles to the north east of Bombay. As he said, “None of this was part of the plan!”

With the 1800 finally ready for the long, lonely drive back to London and pausing only to receive a blessing from a local holy man who gave him some water from the Ganges to drink, on December 14, David took some more of his dwindling supply of Benzedrine and, with a sendoff from the Indian Automobile Association, began the drive home, accompanied for the first 100 miles or so by a member of the Indian press.