A voyage to fabled Timbuktu in a flying car may sound like a magical childhood fantasy.But this week a British adventurer will set off from London on an incredible journey through Europe and Africa in a souped-up sand buggy, travelling by road - and air.With the help of a parachute and a giant fan-motor, Neil Laughton plans to soar over the Pyrenees near Andorra, before taking to the skies again to hop across the 14-km (nine-mile) Straits of Gibraltar.
Designed by a young British inventor, the Skycar enables its driver to pilot the vehicle at the mere touch of a button as though it were a microlite.The team behind it calls the Skycar the world's first road legal biofuelled flying car.Mr Laughton's destination is the west African country of Mali and its city of Timbuktu, a place which has had a mystical, "middle of nowhere" reputation since the heyday of Victorian exploration.
