After our last post we found out that the first team to reach the Georgian/Azerbaijani border had been turned back on the grounds that  their car was right-hand drive and was not going to be allowed into the country.

So, we decided, since I don’t have an Azerbaijani visa that we would take a ferry from Trebzon (a Turkish port) to Sochi (in Russia) across the Black Sea.  So, we cancelled the flights for James and I to fly into Baku and set off in good spirits for Trebzon.

We camped for our first nİght on the outskirts of a little Turkish village.  All went very well, seamless settıng up of campsite, tea and rat-pack cooking!  Went to bed early for an early start.  Upon waking at 5 AM we again managed seamless breaking of camp and breakfast.  However, Visesh had noticed that our Russian visas aren’t valid until the 22nd of July.

This means we have a bit of a wait ahead of us.  Could have been in a much worse place though!  We are currently camped on the beach at a cheap campsite wıth toılets (ish) and showers (very cold).  Made friends wıth the neighbours who offer us tea regularly.

Today is Adam’s 21st birthday!  We have celebrated by goıng for a dip in the ocean, claiming a small island in the name of the Queen and playing Go Fish. Tonight we are hopefully being visited by at least one other team for a BBQ on the beach.

Sorry for quick post but got to go and do some more lazing.  More lazing details and photos coming up later.  Signing out covered ın mosquito bıtes.

Bertha gets some well deserved TLC from Murat

Amy and I found an empty building that used to be an Azerbaijani consulate, met a lovely english-speakıng fellow called Igor who gave us tea and helped us with directions, and discovered that the Istanbul British Embassy is closed at weekends even for British citizens with consular problems - glad our massive passport fees are being put to good use.

With all this done, and having done the tourist thing for a day (huge Mosques and palaces ın the day, then a night of Sheesha, baklava, turkish coffee and being coached in backgammon by giggling Turkish ladies) we set off to begin our adventures in Asia.

Istanbul!

Of course, this meant our European breakdown cover was no longer valid and so Bertha took the opportunity to overheat and break down 2 hours later. On a bridge with a tiny hard shoulder. 25km from civilisatıon. On a Sunday. However, after an extortionate (for Turkey) towing fee and essentially bribing the Toyota Garage owner to open up at the weekend, we received a shiny new thermostat and were on our way.

On the road with Dudley and Rat

We are now in Ankara, having failed to get Amy a visa (’one week, two hundred dollars yes?’) and so are off to find a travel agents to fly her into Azerbaijan, wherein she can get an instant and cheap airport visa. Spirits are high despite these setbacks; everyone is happy to be in Turkey and we all intend to return someday - the weather is good, the hospitality is unbelievable and right now the sound of the prayer call is driftıng through the window from the beautiful Mosque across the road; incredible.

Today I went to a barbers, paid 3 pounds and mimed for shorter hair - 90 minutes later I emerged, having been trimmed, washed, facepacked (no, really), rewashed, shampood, styled, massaged, perfumed and then given tea - anyone can rough it!

One place we really skimmed over was Budapest, mostly because it was really hectic. It was raining like a British summer, the roads are extremely confusing to navigate, and the locals seem to have little respect for traffic lights, indicating, or human life. We eventually gave up on finding the information point our map swore existed whilst making only right turns (not a problem with the car - there is a complicated one-way system in place) and instead headed for an out-of-town point on the merit that it was signposted.

Once there we met a very friendly man who was extremely enthusiastic about our trip and found us two cheap flats to stay in overnight in the town proper. Armed with keys and the best directions ever we soon found our beds, extremely comfy even though located inside crumbling buildings. We decided to make a night out of it and grabbed some gyros and falafel, and settled in a bar to sample their local beer (Soproni - delicious!).

The next day we headed into Romania - shortly over the border we got talking to some locals at a gas station who were very excited by our trip (despite thinking we are “****ing mental”, and are hopefully reading this blog. They gave us plenty of advice and directions, not all of which we took - if you’re reading this guys, you were right, the B road was much, much slower! It did however give us some amazing views of the Romanian countryside. This place is really beautiful and we all want to come back here someday.

As our text blog says, tonight we’re in a 3-star hotel - we arrived in this town early today so we’re taking a short break from the rapid pace before heading into Turkey, where we may well have a slightly larger break enforced as we need to acquire an Azerbaijani visa for Amy there.

Thanks to John (James’s dad) for letting us know about the Romania/Turkey border! Also to Karin for texting us our entire itinerary (might have been useful to take that…).

As usual while we’re on the road we will be updating via text messages which will appear on our other blog, and you can reach us by phone on +37259713778 (which doesn’t cost us anything to receive calls or texts on, and we can text or call out pretty cheaply).

We have also managed to upload a couple of pictures:

When internet availability fails us, we will update our other blog via sms at http://mongolia.charityrallies.org/en/teams/1510/blogs

If you want to phone or text us we can be contacted on +37259713778 - it’s a special international sim card so it shouldn’t cost you a fortune

Wish us luck!

The biggest news for today is that we now have some absolutely awesome stickers! Visesh and I drove into Letchworth to visit Halfords and to get the screw removed from the tyre and possibly fixed if it was a problem. The screw was removed and had not yet done any significant damage! After a little explore we passed ASAP and popped in to see how much it would be to make a sticker and whether they could make it today.

We explained what we were doing, where we were going and why and they got pretty excited! In the end they made us four fantastic stickers with the Fit For Purpose logo and this web address. The most awesome part of all is that they did it all for free! They even put them on for us, nice chaps that they are.

So if you ever need anything printed then call these guys - the stickers are amazing and beautiful and they just make the car look like its up to the job. They also produced them in only 5 hours on top of a full day of work - just awesome!

I’m using the word awesome too much. But they are awesome - thanks guys if you are reading this

In other news our roof rack, James, V5 and passports have made their way over here and things are really coming together. The roof rack is fitted and everything is piled on the lawn ready to be packed. Am now off to do said packing as it would be great to have everything ready for the morning.

Everyone remember: Big London Launch in Highbury Fields Islington - everyone welcome. Pig roast, traditional Nadaam and all the teams and cars lined up!

Pictures to follow of car sticker application and packing but technical problems right now!

Love to all!

Adam and I have spent a couple of days in London in attempt to sort the final two (three for me) in time for the Saturday leaving date.  After a very unproductive Monday (arrived too late as the queue was too long and the Uzbek embassy decided to have an early lunch) we got up early today (6 am!) and got to the Russian Embassy in perfect time to be at a reasonable place in the queue. After an hour of queing Adam left to take his driving test in Cambridge and I continued to queue - obvioulsy a very active process.  Two further hours later I was admitted and within 15 minutes I exited minus a lot of money but clutching a small pink piece of card. 

After visiting Primark (just outside Marble Arch underground station) I went and sat under a tree for a few hours playing Lumines Block Challenge (it’s addictive) on my mobile until Adam returned and we wandered on back to the Russian Embassy where I brandished my pink piece of card and we received 4 lovely passports with extra lovely visas!

After realising there wasn’t really any physical way for me to get both the Uzbekistani and Azerbaijan visas we made a little detour (past one of those cool loos where you pay and it disinfects it in between) and consulted a young lady in an office up a long flight of stairs who listened to my plight and proclaimed she could do it by friday, easy.  Woo!

Observations: centaurs are quite cool actually, the London pigeon has an interesting mating ritual involving following until the female gives in, queues are rubbish and spending money is quite fun actually - possibly should be an extreme sport.

Over and Out

P.S nearly time to go so please donate!  And remember our Big Launch! This Saturday!

We did have a meeting (crammed into the final hours of my visit) in the Black Cat Cafe in Mill Road – the food was lovely – and managed to plan for visas, write an equipment list and create a first entry into our group diary/book thingy.

During my stay we managed to see Mongol at the cinema and it was awesome!  Turns out Mr Khan was actually just misunderstood and persecuted and did all the conquering for the sake of the women and children.  Bless.  The other night involved a late night run to the 24 hour Tesco’s booze section – less said about that the better.

I then popped back to Cam on the Saturday morning and arrived to find that a punt to Grantchester was planned.   S0 Adam, Visesh, Jacky and I set off with gathering rainclouds in the distance, a punt full of food and a jug of Pimms.  The punt out there was quite uneventful except for discovering a rather large crack in the hull which was letting water slowly in.  After a lovely afternoon tea (still rainclouds looming but no rain yet) at the Orchard we set off home.  After doing a little bailing we got off to a good start.  After catching 2 ducks and Adam managing to bridge a bridge whilst also punting the punt we came back to the rollers next to the lock on the way home.  We managed to successfully drag the punt out of the water and onto the downwards rollers but didn’t manage to keep a hold of it. Adam jumped in at the last minute as a huge bow wave overtook the front of the punt and he drifted off into the Mill Pond without a punt pole and a slightly water-filled punt.  After drifting into a handy willow tree he managed to direct the punt to the bank where we all climbed aboard! 

Adam has pulled out all the stops and fantastically managed to get us a whole load of equipment on loan from the RAF.  We have rucksacks, tents, roll mats and rucksacks.  Oh, and a compass.  And the crowning jewel is an array of 24 hour ration packs which are awesome. 

So I’m signing out while Adam lies on Visesh’s living room floor trying out our great sleeping bag and very cool roll mats.  Next is tent.  Wish us luck!

I had spoken to our Dean a few weeks ago, asking him if we would be able to use the day as an opportunity to fundraise, and to park our car in the grounds for all to see. I was supposed to send him more details about what we wanted, but have been rather busy with exams and other end of term activities. I was therefore quite concerned about the success of this venture, as it was our main planned fund raising event.

Anyway, we managed to badger the few hundred or so people there, dressed in our wonderfully used orange coveralls, with makeshift donation boxes made of out of tupperware boxes with our poorly planned spiel, and raised over £170. It’ll be up on our justgiving page just as soon as we finish counting and bagging it. We’ve had a few donations directly to our justgiving pages (links on the right) since. We also met a few people who’d done the rally or something similar before, and one interesting chap who worked in Azerbaijan. We got lots of friendly (if a little drunken…) advice, the most important being “always carry a few bricks of ENGLISH Marlboro Reds”- useful for getting past most customs agents and border guards. Another gem was “Take some rope. No, not for towing, but for fixing your suspension of course. What’s that, you don’t know how to fix your suspension with rope? Don’t worry, you’ll learn.”

I’d like to thank everyone who has donated and everyone else at the fun day who made us feel welcome even though we invaded their picnics and demanded money. The £1000 target doesn’t seem all that unobtainable now…!

1600: Go to Halfords, buy required oil, oil wrench filter, bucket etc.
1700: Fish out manual. Manual says the following - Step 1: Remove old motor oil. Step 2: Remove and replace oil filter. Step 3: Add new oil to required level. Helpful.
1730: Locate oil sump drain plug, we think. Looks nothing like manual picture. Plug is rusty and is very stiff.
1745: Unable to remove plug, realise WD-40 was packed and sent home yesterday. Return to Halfords.
1830: WD-40 and remove (suspected) oil sump plug. Much to our relief, oil pours out.
1845: Reaching from underneath through a very small gap, remove oil filter with wrench and promptly receive an armful of warm oil. Spend an hour trying to remove (now slippery) filter from engine. Fail.
2000: Realise that there is a panel that can be removed from the wheel arch giving free and easy access to the oil filter.
2015: Remove panel and old filter, fit new filter, replace sump plug and add new oil in about 15 minutes. Wonder why the manual didn’t mention that blasted panel.
2030: Test engine, which remarkably doesn’t break/leak/explode. Clean oil off the places it has got to (i.e. everywhere), drain old oil into bottle and tidy away tools and equipment.
2140: Take random photos of us in coveralls covered in oil. Make stupid poses with WD-40/Duck Tape. Read warnings on back of oil bottle and hastily wash hands and arms.
2200: Order pizza and beer. Finished!

Only 6 hours and at a cost significantly greater than paying a garage to do it, but I’m willing to pay the premium for the immense feeling of smugness and an evening of entertainment. Now, what else can we possibly fix…?

Photos following soon!

To celebrate the completion of our team, we all got together last weekend to chill out and try to fix some minor problems with Bertha. This was the first time our team and car had all been together in the same place, and I am glad to say we all got on very well - this was evidenced by the friendly insults that were flying around within minutes of introductions. As for Bertha: we managed to fix her electric windows, which is useful as we also discovered that she is so old her AC coolant is an illegal substance and therefore cannot be replaced. We had some very useful help from Amy’s dad, so thank you very much if you are reading this!

Other than this Amy has been immediately getting active with fund raising and preparation which is much appreciated, as there are only three weeks left until the launch of the Rally! Still, with the electric windows fixed all we need now is to get the money, spares, equipment, tools and visas so we’re well on our way.