Wednesday, 11 May 2016

Just about all ready to go!

The car has gone, we have all the required visas and vaccinations.  We have a document saying we are allowed to bring the car home.  Now there’s nothing to do really.  There must be something to worry about.  I’m worried there is nothing to worry about

Well - a couple of little worries, I suppose.

At the Alpine Rally last year, we bought two 195 size tyres as that was all we could get down there. We normally use 205s. Cleaning up after the car has gone, Mark can find only one 195 tyre.  We think there is a good chance we have sent it off with an odd tyre.  Never mind, we can take a matching tyre with us as luggage on our flight!

All the countries we travel through on this event drive on the right hand side.  So Mark has installed an arrow (left) at the top of the windscreen in front of the driver to try and enforce which side to go for in an emergency

On London to Cape Town in 2012, we had a very minor head-on with some Belgian boys (now good friends) when on a very narrow road we both should not have been on, they went to the right to get off the road and we went to the left.  The cars just touched gently and no real harm done but we’ll never forget it.

We are still to organise sending some tyres to somewhere in Russia and I can spend endless hours looking at maps of where we are going

The car isn’t there yet.  It went via Japan and is now on the way to Shanghai.

Next update, hopefully from Beijing

Next: local news media in Newcastle take up the story