Now ready to embark on his first adventure, Carey had, in effect, a completely new, rally-spec DB2/4 MkIII at his disposal. Not one to start off small, Carey and his steed set off on the 12,500-mile Panama to Alaska Rally in 2008, which took him and different members of his family together with 17 other participants in a wide range of classic cars through Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize and Mexico before entering the United States. Heading up through North America via ‘Canyonland,’ the journey continued through Salt Lake City and on to Canada, where they travelled by the Trans American highway to Dawson City before crossing back into the USA for the final leg through Alaska to the finish line in Anchorage. Despite many teething problems and persistent clutch trouble following the restoration, the rally was a great success and would prove to be the first of many epic road trips for the pair.
With a taste for the Global Rally format and driving in challenging conditions, the next adventure was the circumnavigation of the Mediterranean in the ‘Rallye Med’ in 2010. Another 12,500-mile drive took him and his fellow adventurers from Morocco, up through Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Tunisia and into Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. "The reaction from local people when they saw the make of the unfamiliar car in their midst was to shout 'Aston Martin – James Bond!', although they didn’t think I looked much like 007!" he remembers.
Leaving the Middle East just days before the Arab Spring in December 2010, the Rally’s route looped back through Turkey, Greece, Albania, up the Dalmatian Coast to Zagreb and on to Austria and Germany before finishing in Rheims, France. "This was a phenomenal rally because of the huge political and social upheaval that's taken place since we were there. Our trip through Libya was remarkable for the posters to Gaddafi on every lamp post, now long gone, and poignantly we visited and admired the wonderfully preserved ancient ruins at Palmyra before they were destroyed by ISIS.”