overland-underwater.com - A Charity Drive UK-NZ

Alex Towns

I was born in the UK but only stayed until I was 5 when I moved to Oman. This was the start of my travelling lifestyle and it’s never really ended! After 2 years in Oman my family moved to Bahrain. During the 10 years I spent there, I had the opportunity to travel the Middle and Far East quite extensively. I love adventure and exploring new cultures, and being an avid scuba diver, I spend as much time as possible under the water. My passion in life is to go diving in the UK and as many exotic places around the world.

Maz Towns

I learnt to dive when I started at the University of Surrey and couldn’t believe my luck, when 2 years later, I got the opportunity to carry out my industrial placement in Adelaide, Australia. Obviously a great place to experience my first warm water diving - a pleasant change to the cold water Cornish coast where I’d carried out most of my training dives. This is where the travel bug hit. I travelled throughout Australia with Alex in my ‘passion wagon’ and saw a lot of the South and East coast of Australia during my years stay there. After returning to the UK to finish my finals, I worked in Austria for 6 months where I practiced skiing (on company time)! Since then I have travelled and dived in as many places as possible including North and South Africa, UK, the Far East and South America.

Martin Pitwood

My taste for exploration started very early thanks to extensive travel in the US while living there for a period as a child. On moving back to the UK I was fortunate to have regular family caravan holidays around the UK and Western Europe. I learned to dive while at university and since then I've travelled to new places whenever possible for both diving and non-diving trips, but from entering Slovenia until entering Australia the whole of this itinerary will be through countries I've never visited before (except a couple of weeks diving in the Red Sea and a week in a factory in China a few years ago!). I have been living in Chambéry in the French Alps for the last 3 years, working in the mobile telecommunications industry and enjoying the snowboarding.

Max Smith

I was brought up in the Cotswolds where I spent most of my childhood enjoying the great outdoors. From this grew a passion for adventure sports and backpacking, to some of the most remote parts of the world. I like to think I would try anything once and have been lucky enough see many of the world's wonders. My career has led me into operations management currently within the Leisure industry. I have always enjoyed the feelings of adventure and discovery and the learning travelling can bring.