Around the World in 80 Stages: From Arctic Ice to African Dust

Almost ten years ago, in early 2016, we ran a nice feature on Motorsport.ie called *“Arctic Rally and a Wedding with Catherine and Matt Shinnors!”* (You can read it HERE.) It was about an Irish couple who had just got married in an ice church outside Rovaniemi in Finland and decided the most natural honeymoon was to tackle the Arctic Rally in a left hand drive BMW on snow and ice.

Back then, finishing that rally felt like a lifetime achievement for them. What none of us realised was that it was really just Chapter One.

Since that Lapland adventure, Matt and Catherine have not exactly been sitting still. They have quietly gone off and done what most of us only daydream about. They have rallied on all six inhabited continents, almost twice over, in just about every type of rally car and on every surface you can think of. It is believed within rallying circles that Matt is the first Irish driver to have competed on all six continents, with Catherine the first Irish female co driver to share that achievement.

Ask Matt for a quick summary of the last decade and he laughs before trying to condense it into a sentence.

 “We’ve now competed on all six continents almost twice,” he says, “in pretty much every combination of car and surface. Front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and four wheel drive, left and right hand drive, and on tar, gravel, mud, snow and sand. That was the dream when we started, but I don’t think we ever really expected to actually tick it all off.”

In Europe they have mainly rallied in Ireland, particularly in the Irish Forestry Championship, along with a memorable appearance on Arctic Rally Finland in 2016. North America is ticked off too. There was Sol Rally Barbados in 2012, where they finished third in class in a Mk2 Escort and came home not just with trophies, but an engagement as well. Then came Gorman Ridge Rally in the USA, where they finished second in class and rallied alongside Irish rally legend John Coyne, on roads that once formed part of the X Games Rally route.

Asia brought more variety again. They tackled the Shinshiro Rally in Japan, a WRC candidate event, in a TRD-supported Toyota GT86 on tight, technical tarmac stages. Then came Thailand and the RTRC Chachoengsao Rally, where they tackled 40-degree heat on loose gravel in a Corolla KE25 (below) and managed to bag a class win.

South America is there as well via Rally del Atlántico in Uruguay, a South American Rally Championship round, tackled in a front wheel drive Ford Fiesta on flowing gravel roads that reminded Matt of New Zealand. The Middle East has now joined the list too. This year, Catherine added a new chapter to the story by competing on Rally Jameel, a women’s cross country navigational rally in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, alongside Patricia Denning.

Earlier this year, Oceania came onto the list as well, with ARC Forest Rally in Western Australia on old Perth WRC stages in a Datsun 1600, and Canterbury Rally in New Zealand on classic Silver Fern roads, where they took another class win in an AE86 Corolla – a return to familiar territory for Matt after WRC Rally New Zealand in 2006, but a completely new adventure for Catherine.

All of that set the scene for their latest African chapter in Madagascar.

Their African story started with the Safari Rally in Kenya in 2018 in a Mk2 Escort. Like many who tackle Safari, they left Kenya exhausted, awestruck and slightly hooked, already talking about coming back to the continent someday.

For Matt, the return carried an extra layer of meaning. He was born in May 1978, just weeks after Jean Pierre Nicolas won the Safari Rally in a Peugeot 504, and his parents even worked the Frenchman’s name into his own: Matthew A Jean Pierre Shinnors. Getting the chance decades later to compete in Africa in a classic 1975 Peugeot 504 felt like closing a very particular circle.

The opportunity came with the Grand Rallye de Madagascar, Rally ASACM, based around Antananarivo. On paper it was another big African adventure in a classic Peugeot. In reality it was a whole lot more complicated. The event went ahead despite the small matter of a military coup only weeks beforehand, with the organisers quietly pushing on and delivering a proper rally in the most challenging of circumstances.

Even before the start ramp, Madagascar made them work for it. Recce quickly turned into a rally of its own. Heavy rain turned the roads into thick red mud, and one particular 19 km stage took them an hour and fifteen minutes to cover in the recce Jeep, crawling along in four-wheel-drive low and sliding sideways down the road whether they liked it or not. It was a stark illustration of what the competition cars would face at speed.

Away from the timing clocks, the route offered a vivid window into everyday life in Madagascar. Out on the stages and liaison sections they passed women carrying huge loads on their heads, schoolchildren walking miles in uniform, cattle pulling wooden carts and villages that seemed to appear out of nowhere around the next bend. It underlined again how rallying often gives competitors a view of a country most tourists never see.

The stages themselves were a serious test: narrow, technical, muddy and deeply rutted, feeling at times like a mash-up of a rough autocross, Irish forestry and a night navigation event. In places, it even made their previous Safari experience look almost straightforward.

They started strongly on the opening day, the old Peugeot 504 mixing it with much newer machinery and modern rally cars. When everything was working, the 504 had real character and plenty of pace, evoking images of classic Safari battles from the 1970s.

In the end, though, Africa refused to provide a storybook finish. A terminal engine issue eventually put them out of the event. The result was disappointing, of course, but they left Madagascar feeling they had proved the car’s potential, survived some brutal conditions and gained exactly what they value most: stories, memories and a deeper sense of the place.

In simple terms, not much has changed since that Arctic Rally honeymoon – it’s still just a husband and wife from Ireland using rallying as their excuse to see the world. From an ice church in Finland to red mud in Madagascar in a Peugeot 504, their *“Around the World in 80 Stages”* idea has quietly become reality across six continents. And you’d have to think there are still a few more stamps to come in those passports yet.

VLOG from Madagacar:

What an incredible story! We will be keeping a close eye on this incredible Irish couple in 2026, and probably well beyond!