Ten days after leaving school, Robert Grant enlisted in the Scots Guards and progressed to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. A knee injury terminated his military career. After the epic journey described in Road to Ruins, he flew to Kenya and hitchhiked through Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa to Durban to sail to Australia. He has motor raced throughout Europe, including Le Mans, and competed in Mexico’s Carrera Panamericana, Targa Tasmania and the Springbok Series in Southern Africa.
Robert bought the name of the outerwear brand Puffa a few months after its inception, building it up to Royal Warrant qualification; the word, especially in the form ‘puffa jacket’, is now essentially a generic term. He now lives in Perthshire.
The Road to Ruins
‘Young man required to drive overland to Australia.’In October 1963, the 22-year-old Robert Grant, recently invalided out of the army and demoralised by the stifling conformity of postwar Britain, responded to this advertisement in The Times. It had been placed by another young Englishman, Gordo...
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