THEY’RE record breakers! A crew of 25 people have made it into the Guinness book of Records for circumnavigating the world in a Dorset fire engine in a nine-month epic mission.

Steve Moore, 33, dreamt up the Follow that Fire Engine expedition after losing his dad Garth Moore, a Wimborne firefighter for 33 years, to cancer in 2009.

The continent-crossing campaign, which has now spawned t-shirts and a children’s book, has made £117,764 for Macmillan Cancer Care, The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and The Fire Fighters Charity so far.

Steve left London in July last year, clocking up 26,000 miles through 28 countries. His brother Chris, 37, and mutual friends joined him for some of the route’s nine stages.

Steve said: “Mongolia was probably my highlight. There’s no place like it on earth.

“We did thousands of miles off road and were completely self-sufficient in the desert for sometime. We learnt survival skills – there were no real maps. You just got up every day and headed east.”

Settling back into life as a trader in London has been quite a culture shock, but Steve says he won’t miss the endless admin of crossing borders.

The first real problem was entering Russia, and the crew also had to remove Martha the engine’s lights, ladders and deflate her tyres to board a ship in New York.

Steve, who’s mum Verity still lives in Wimborne, said: “Any border or port presented huge issues, despite the amount of preparation we’d done.

“There was just a constant pressure, knowing you were never two weeks away from one.”

The hospitality around the globe blew the gang away.

“People just couldn’t get enough,” Steve said.

“Everywhere we went we were offered help or a cup of coffee or food to keep us going.”

Footage of the adventure is being edited into a documentary, and talks are underway to put Martha in a museum.

She and the crew will be at Wimborne Fire Station’s open day on Saturday. Visit www.followthatfireengine.com