LIFE is a GREAT BOOK

Jonathan Turner, (58) better known as JT, is the CEO of the Bayford Group, a multi-million-pound energy and property conglomerate which he took over as MD in 2000. Four years later he orchestrated a rare family business buy out which 30 years on has developed into a booming, diverse group including energy infrastructure, gas and power supply, EV charging points, property development, hospitality and holiday homes, a group that has turned old energy into new from petrol stations and fuel cards to electric charging points – yet Jonathan doesn’t need any electric charge. His energy is self-charging and could blow the meter, his enthusiasm indicators are at maximum.

As a student on six months ‘work experience’ he sold 'Mickey Mouse' toiletries to Selfridges and delivered a further big order from Next and then BHS! Through his infectious enthusiasm and persuasion coupled with his erudite yet charming manner, he achieved a sales coup. His temporary bosses were gobsmacked by his sales performance, but he turned them down after university. Instead, to underline his sales talent, he started in the family business selling coal door to door – the beginning of his meteoric rise in commerce and the growth of Bayford’s energy business which has had its rewards, one of them being his favourite hideaway in Scotland and of course a collection of wonderful old cars, including the first British car, a Bentley, that raced at Le Mans 100 years ago.

He summarised his youthful charge up the charts; “I used to read books about entrepreneurs, and I knew that’s what I wanted to be!”

He also once said ‘I don’t want to work with miserable people’ and that he wants to ‘have fun and make money in that order,’ which manifests itself in his drive and guidance of his bright and energetic team who react with positivity to his often-alternative ideas which can cause chaos. Yet J.T. the ‘Disruptor’ keeps everyone on their toes at the beautiful Bayford Group HQ, at the Bowcliffe Hall Estate near Wetherby in Yorkshire, dating back to 1805.

A testament to his love of architecture, the building is so full of heritage that it doubles as an exclusive Private Members Club, the Bowcliffe Drivers Club. The centre piece is the award-winning Blackburn Wing - a big treehouse - which pays tribute to the unsung Yorkshire aviation hero Robert Blackburn. It is also the base for J.T.’s charitable division, the Jay Tee Foundation and his work for the Archbishop of York as an Ambassador and a host of other notable Yorkshire and national charities. He is as Yorkshire as Wensleydale cheese in Wallace and Gromit or the Dales, as he says; “Yorkshire is God’s own country” – naturally!

So passionate is he about heritage and originality that when competing on historic events like HERO-ERA’s the Flying Scotsman or the RAC Rally of the Tests, he is attired in full 1930s tweed, topped by his favourite bowler hat. Heritage should be his middle name as motoring artefacts, wonderful original artwork, planes, and trophies fill Bowcliffe Hall, whilst his home houses his old cars, maps, charts, dozens of rally plates and an incredible collection of hats from wherever he has been. “I like to collect junk,” said Jonathan.

Although he is famous for saying ‘life is for living and we only get one chance,’ J.T. is a very busy man running his empire, so time is tight, but he has agreed to find time for the interview. He is due to talk about his passion for historic motoring and the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, and why he is returning 28 years after he first competed on the second ever P2P in 1997, in exactly the same Bentley!

He is in a Deputy Lieutenant’s meeting when we eventually disturb his frantic schedule, Jonathan; “I jumped out of a forestry meeting for the DL meeting, before that I was in an EV meeting, my team are saying they've got some people sitting in the kitchen now, talking about different parts of the hospitality business and should I join in! Work is naturally good fun but there’s always a place for adventure and my rally pals.”

J.T. confirmed; “Yes, it’s the same four and a half litre Bentley that I did my first Peking to Paris in, the second ever P2P since 1907, revived by the legendary Philip Young of ERA. The late Stanley Mann from the Fruit Farm (Bentley prep) at the time said, ‘I don’t know why you are going, you can’t take a Bentley over the Himalayas, you’ll never make it!’ To be fair to Stanley he was right, nobody had ever driven over the Himalayas in a vintage Bentley before! But we did and it was a huge adventure, so now I'm attempting the P2P journey again in exactly the same car, and I think I'm the only person on this trip that competed in 1997.”

Then there was 10-year gap to 2007 for the third Peking to Paris. Jonathan and navigator Adam Hartley enjoyed a great trip in the Bentley previously so for J.T. adventure being a major love, he and Adam decided they were going to do it again. This time their choice was a 100-year-old 1907 Itala 40, the same marque and model used by Prince Borghese to win the first P2P in 1907. Jonathan; “I’m not saying it was easy to do it in such an old car when a lot of other competitors had got windscreens and wind up windows, but I like adventure and I love a challenge. So, to do it in a Volvo Amazon or a Mercedes is still a hard task, but it is relatively easy compared to doing it in an Itala or a 1920s Bentley, we always wanted to do it how they competed originally. If they could do it then, we felt we could certainly do it now.

“So that's how we ended up 10 years later doing it again as Philip Young realised that actually we should do the rally more often. It wasn’t quite the same pioneering adventure as going to ‘closed’ countries, driving through Nepal, Tibet, Iran, Pakistan or driving through Russia, but P2Ps are still a wonderful challenge, and Philip was a wonderful guy. What he did for the historic rallying is incredible and well known, and he was a pioneer, he was a proper visionary.

“In the early days in 1997 and 2007, it really was genuinely groundbreaking and to do it in a 1907 Itala with no windscreen, no doors and wooden wheels, well there's absolutely madness for you. But we got it from Peking to Paris. We did it. It’s a long story in terms of how we did it, including transplanting a 1990’s Volga engine and gearbox into the car after the crankshaft snapped in the Gobi Desert, then catching up the rally driving day and night having been out of it for two weeks!

“We were totally knackered in the Gobi Desert ending up thousands of miles off piste in Siberia trying to find an engine, but once transplanted with the amazing help of locals, we managed to get going again. We drove day and night through northern Russia, we caught the rally up two days the other side of Moscow at Kazan, then we drove up to St Petersburg and into the Baltic states. We were perched up high with no windscreen and no doors, so we were subject to the elements. It was tough, and then we come through Europe and the bloody rear wheel fell off in Poland! We found a house builder and some roofing nails to fix that back on.

“It was just incredible adventure on both trips for me. That's why I haven't done it since, as both events were significantly life changing, I thought I was done.

“I felt that in particular the first one, no question, was monumental. The first people to ever have the freedom to drive in China, the first people to get a Chinese driver's licence. The first people since the fall of the Shah of Iran to drive through Iran. You know, the first people to venture into Tibet since the Chinese invaded, to drive through Tibet and across Friendship Bridge into Nepal then Pakistan driving through villages, designates of Afghanistan, moments you capture, where the Taliban were, I mean, bloody hell! We were like, OMG, I can't believe we're doing this. Everything we did was just so groundbreaking. It was amazing and I was in a 1929 Bentley! No technology. No phones. We were using maps to navigate which I still have. It was awesome.

“So, then I came home at the age of 30 thinking the world's mostly OK, generally in one piece and I can go anywhere, do anything, as the adventure gives you a lot of confidence. I learned a lot and thought wow, I can now get these old cars to perform. So it changed my life in terms of what I felt we could then do in historic rallying and the motivation was and remains very high.

“My kids have grown up loving adventure travel and it just opened my eyes to the world. I was just so young at 30 then, I grew up in Yorkshire, I went on family holidays to Spain, you know, a bit of a cliche and now all of a sudden, I'm in Tibet, it changed my life in so many ways, it really did and so my children have also become great adventurers. They love rallying and the adventure and camaraderie it brings. I have met some of my greatest friends on those trips.

“I'm very lucky that my friend Adam Hartley who owned the car back then said, ‘let's go on the Peking to Paris Rally!’ It has pretty much been a game changer for me, probably work-wise as well entrepreneurially, it's probably made me even more of a risk taker!”

After 28 years J.T. and the 1929 Bentley are back. They were going to return in 2022 only for COVID to intervene then Jonathan snapped his Achilles Heel last year in Japan pushing a 1922 Bentley so disappointingly missed the P2P last year.

“It will be the 28th anniversary for me of my first P2P in 1997. Yeah, so when my car lands in Beijing, it hasn't been there for 28 years and when it goes to the Great Wall of China, it hasn't been there for 28 years. Well to be fair it was there last year, and I had to ship it back so Nick and I could wash it and ship it back to Beijing again! When we leave, we drive through China, the last time I drove there I was going to Tibet, there were no roads across that part of China in those days and we have some great pictures, it was just nuts!

“We went back to Nepal and India in 2018 for the HERO-ERA Himalayan Challenge in the same Bentley, I was on the rally with my son Freddie navigating which was a dream for me. The Clerk of the Course had to make difficult decisions particularly as many of the roads were washed away. We spent two or three days going nowhere. Then they got us to drive over this damaged rickety wooden bridge, like something out of Indiana Jones. You know, we're all crapping ourselves. I even told Freddie to get out of the car and walk over the bridge, because if anybody's going down in that water it’s me, not both of us going down. His Mother won’t have been happy! So, you know, you do end up in difficult situations and you have to appreciate the pressure on people like Guy Woodcock as organisers with sometimes critical decisions to make. The border is closed, the road gets washed away, the campsite has run out of beer.

“I absolutely loved driving through India though in the Bentley, it was an amazing experience, which is why I returned and entered the recent HERO-ERA Pearl of India to drive through that awesome country again. It is the most beautiful country full of gorgeous happy people. Such wonderful culture, food and stunning scenery.

However, I’m not interested in winning an event, though I’ve been close a few times, what I want to really do is enjoy an adventure and have some fun, which is why I like doing these historically important events in challenging cars.

“So when this great friend of mine, Nick English and I sat in a restaurant a good few years ago he told me it was his dream to do the Peking to Paris, it took me a nanosecond for me to say OK let’s do it! He’s a great pilot, he flies pre-war aircraft, he does in the sky what we do on the ground, but he's never done a rally before. This is his first rally so it’s going to be quite funny. I've done bloody hundreds and all the big adventures, all the big travel stuff, so it's going to be quite interesting. We get on really well. He’s damn cool and I trust his judgement which is really important on a trip like this.

“I asked him if he wanted to do it in a pre-war Bentley? He was beside himself. So, hey presto, we enter the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, and I'm on it again and I'm thinking, this is madness yet I'm so excited. I've never been to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan all those stamps on the passport, I am so excited about motoring through those countries, meeting the local people and having some fun.”

J.T. was asked how he thought 2025 was going to compare to 1997?

“I'm so lucky to have travelled through these amazing countries and see how people live. There are not many silk routes, and I know I will have done three if we make it to Paris. Using technology rather than maps seriously reduces the challenge, but life moves on and we have to embrace it.

“It's still going to be tough though, well I hope so, we all want it to be tough. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. I don't think any of us want it easy, but then I know **it can happen, and you just kind of get on with it. It's a bit like breaking down, that's when the fun starts. That’s when you meet people you had no idea you were going to meet, and you appreciate how wonderful human beings are no matter where they are from or their background, they all want to help. Less so when we got arrested in Moscow, but we managed to get out of that scrape!

“We are also going to Azerbaijan and Georgia on this trip which I am excited about, hopefully with some great roads and great culture to soak up. I have rallied in Georgia before and borrowed a 1930’s Ford from their National Motor Museum. If we encounter issues, we will make some phone calls. There's always somebody somewhere who knows the President of Whoever or the King of Nowhere, it will be a well networked group as the participants on the route invariably are, whether it is 1997, 2007 or 2025. I remember in 1997 and 2007 meeting some fantastic people, in 1997 a great bloke called Simon Mann was on the rally who ended up orchestrating a coup in Equatorial New Guinea not long afterwards, although that didn’t end well!

“Hopefully with no political coups we aim to end the 2025 P2P well, in Paris!”