ASHBURTON’S unluckiest adventurer looks like finally making his 30-year dream of a canoe trip around Greece come true.

For the past 10 years, 68-year-old conservationist Friar West has been trying to recreate the marathon sea canoe trip he made across the Mediterranean in 1986.

But bad luck, illness and disaster have dogged him every step of the way.

He built a sea canoe in a friend’s workshop, but just as it was finished the workshop was sold and the new owner chopped it in half to get it out.

While he was trying to fix the canoe the cold weather and the fact that the workshop’s owner jetted off to South America caused yet more delays.

After finally completing it, a storm blew up, threatening to blow a tree over onto the canoe. While trying to save the boat in the dark, Mr West tripped and injured his shoulder seriously.

After abandoning that canoe, Mr West recruited volunteers to build a new one from scratch in just six hours. But another accident left him with an injured leg – and the canoe fell apart anyway.

Just before he was due to jet out to Greece, his car blew up and he was left having to move all his stored belongings when a friend sold his house, and a series of dental problems caused yet more delays.

When he finally arrived in Greece, a friend who had promised to help him build another canoe turned out to be an internet addict who never got out of bed before midday and who was given his marching orders by his wife in the middle of Mr West’s stay.

As he tried to get some canoe practice in, he found himself abandoned on a remote beach that turned out to be a ‘disco holiday beach’.

Last year he was all ready to go, with his canoe loaded onto his van, when he was struck down by a cricked neck, diagnosed as torticollis, which left him in agony and unable to make the trip.

But now Mr West, who lives in Ashburton and runs the Totnes-based International Conservation Awareness Network, said he is finally on his way.

Mr West will be leaving for Greece at the end of March with his canoe strapped to the top of his van, heading for the town of Patras.

From there he is planning to paddle up to 1,000 km around the Peloponnese, observing and recording the habitat of the endangered Monk seal for the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal.

‘I’ve wanted to go back ever since I made the canoe trip 30 years ago,’ said Mr West.

‘I’ve been trying really hard for 10 years, and last year the canoe was on the roof of the van and everything was ready to go and I got torticollis. It was more painful than a broken bone.’

Asked if he was finally going to achieve his dream, he said: ‘My God, I’d better. The tickets are paid for and I’m too old to leave it any longer.’

Mr West has received funding from supporters and local businesses for his latest canoe trip attempt and friends have set up a crowdfunding site for him at www.just giving.com/crowdfunding/ICAN.

He has made various solo canoe trips in the sea since 1974, mainly around the south west, although one took him across the Channel to Calais.

More famously, he made one trip from Torquay, where he was then living, to the Isle of Wight in 1976: he found four naked women with their own boat and ended up delaying his canoe trip for an extra four days.

His experiences have formed part of a series of TV shows about the year of 1976, which were screened in 2008.