A BLACKPOOL business man has just returned from an epic journey through forest, across desert and sweltering tropical heat.

Peter Swire, managing director of Moreland Motors, Ansdell Road, pictured along with along with colleague Mark Bowie (right) at a check point in Romania, endured 32 days of tough competition to come third out of the whole field in the London to Sydney marathon.

They also came first out of all the British teams taking part.

And the most amazing thing of the 16,800km journey, which took them through Turkey, Thailand and Malasia, was that it was made in a car not too dissimilar to one you would buy off his forecourt -- a Vauxhall Frontera 4x4.

They managed to power through into third despite only having a 2.2 litre engine -- some of the other teams had engines almost three times as big!

"You've got to have faith in your product, so it seemed a natural choice to take one of the cars we supply," said Peter.

"We only made a few modifications like adding a roll cage for safety, toughening up the underside of the body and selecting different tyres.

"But we came through relatively unscathed in comparison to some of the other competitors who crawled across the line in some terrible states. In one case a team completely wrote their car off." Three years ago Peter and Mark came first in the Panama to Alaska rally and so they were hoping to get another gold for their trophy cabinet. The race consisted of short set stages on private roads, where they were timed to fractions of a second, and then longer road journeys where they had to stay within the legal speed limit at all times.

Anyone who failed to make the deadline at the end of the stage was out. "Unfortunately we made a couple of mistakes early on," said Peter

"One day we made a navigational error which cost us time and we also picked up some penalty points, which meant at the end of the first leg we were in 18th place.

"But when we got to Australia out in the Northern Territories we really caught up -- but it was a shame as we never really looked like threatening the team that came first."

"That was my favourite part of the journey in Australia -- long open roads where you will travel for hours without seeing anything.

"The only side effect of these rallies is that I am now bitten by the travel bug and it is not long after I get back that I start thinking about travelling again." Peter and Mark are now in preparation for the Cape to Cape rally in two years' time which starts in Norway and finishes in South Africa.