AN ELCOMBE man who drove halfway across the globe for cancer care has finally made it home.

Adventurous Matthew Smith motored 16,700 across Europe and Central Asia to reach Ulan Ude on the Russia-Mongolian border at the end of August.

Together with friend Will Keat, 28-year-old Matthew took a £500 Suzuki Wagon on the trip of a lifetime as they tackled the Mongol Rally in aid of Brighter Futures.

The popular road race sees teams from across the world head off from the historic Goodwood race track – trying to make it to the Mongolian Steppe in the quickest time, using any route they choose.

The Mongol Rally organisers set just three rules. First, you can’t take a car with an engine larger than one litre. Second, you need to know the roads. And third, you’ve got to raise at least £1,000 for charity.

Matthew and Will raised more than £1,500 for Brighter Futures, the charity that hopes to raise £2.9m for a new radiotherapy unit at the Great Western Hospital.

The cause is close to Matthew’s heart. His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when her son was at Commonweal School in Swindon and Matthew watched her make the gruelling trip to Oxford for radiotherapy treatment.

“She was absolutely brilliant,” son Matthew said. “She always put the family first.

“People who are suffering with this terrible disease shouldn’t have to face the stress of the journey. We should be doing all we can to ensure their lives are made easier.”

Matthew and Will set off from Goodwood on July 16, the day of Matthew’s 28th birthday, in a 13-year-old car they’d bought from a friend’s mother.

As they left the UK, the car – which had only had one careful owner – had 28,000 miles on the clock.

When they rolled into Wroughton on Saturday, the car’s mileometer read 44,000 miles.

Along their two month journey, the friends endured camping on petrol station car parks, watched hot air balloons fly into the sunrise, encountered black market money changers and received worried calls from relatives as they strayed close to the Afghanistan border.

Matthew, whose car contained a GPS tracker that relayed their position to Mongol Rally organisers, said: “My sister rang me to ask, ‘Are you safe?’”

The call turned out to be a blessing for the pair. “We weren’t quite sure where we were,” joked Matthew.

At one Central Asian border point the pair thought they’d been shot at – but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Waiting for some fellow rally teams to get through customs, they sat at a café: “We heard this massive explosion. All the locals started running, so we got up and left very quickly. Luckily, it was just a lorry tyre that had blown up.”

In Uzbekistan, where the economy is mostly operated in cash, credit card-carrying Matthew and Will found themselves carrying massive wads of notes.

“The official exchange rate is about 4,100 s’om to one dollar,” Matthew said. “We went to a market, where they offered us a rate of 8,800 s’om to the dollar. So we ended up with huge stacks of cash. We had to carry them around by rucksack because they were too big for our wallets.”

Despite burning through five tyres, their car didn’t fail – and even towed a newer vehicle 120 miles through the desert.

The pair nicknamed the little car Gordon. “It sounds like a very reliable, trustworthy name,” said Matthew. But with the back seats ripped out to make way for their kit, Gordon seems doomed to be sold for scrap.

Now back on home soil, the Reading University student is preparing for an interview later this month that will confirm whether he will be awarded his PhD.

His next adventure would be a little closer to home, Matthew said. “I think I’ll get told off if I go away on more adventures,” he joked. “I need to treat my girlfriend to a holiday.”