A man from Bootle has quit his day job to travel around Europe on an inflatable banana boat.
Fed up with the Monday morning blues, Les Donohue-Bromley, who currently resides in France, will take the 4,000km journey along the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers before finishing it off with a complimentary four-star hotel stay in a Bulgarian beach resort.
Les, a former missionary, is 61 and currently runs a building company as well as a bed breakfast, but he has sold up in order to help fund the trip.
He told JMU Journalism: “I’ve been looking around for something else to do aside from my businesses when one of my customers came into my bar. He turned out to be a film producer and from the conversations with him, he said how difficult it was to come up with a new idea as everything has now been done five times over.”
The film producer interested in Les’ journey is from Canal TV in France and Mr Donohue-Bromley said: “I discovered there’s a route over the Alps from the North Sea to the Black Sea which looked an interesting route and I thought it would be different to do a story about trying to get the boat across it.
“I came up with the idea of a banana because it actually doesn’t fit any of the silly rules and regulations.
His journey will begin at the port of Rotterdam city marina and Les said: “This is where I will be putting the boat into the water. I’ll be there doing press conferences as well and I have a few planned stops. The National Banana Research Centre has invited me – you couldn’t make it up, could you?”
When asked what Les was most excited about, he replied: “Not going to work on Monday morning! I’m mostly excited about meeting new people, doing exactly what you’re doing now – a bit of reporting, journalism if you like, in the form of having a great time.
“I would like to do a book about my journey to so hopefully this will give me enough material.”