The Baltic States

We've had a fantastic past three days. The russian border seems a life time ago; some cars and crews taking up to 8 hours to get through. A great shame realy as up until then most peoples exsperiences had, for the most part, been good.



The three Baltic states we have been in for the past three days are fantastic, its hard to comprehend that they were under the sway of the old soviet union only 15 years ago. For quite a few cars, or rather crews, the realy serious rallying has only just begun; special stages, time trials and all that sort of stuff.

For the rest of us the interest remains getting to Paris with the added interest of having some time to sight see, or even (god forbid) relax a little.

Tomorrow we move on into Poland.

Russia - The Volga, more locals and a funny noise from the gearbox

Just to bring you up to date.

We are now in St Petersburg and move on to Tallinn tomorrow. We're still keeping up with the rally, despite all of our problems in western Mongolia (that really was tough on all the cars). And with just three wrecked shocks and a broken spring we
did quite well in retrospect.

The spring was bodged up overnight in the last town in Mongolia, but it did allow us to keep in touch with the rally until the first rest day in Russia. The first try to fix the spring was a failure and damaged the fuel tank. The guy blew it, and nearly himself, up trying to fix it. That was another night with minimal sleep; a new tank and spring fitted between midnight and 6am.

The next rest day was in Yekaterinburg and I had hoped to see a bit more than the under side of the Austin. I got to spend most of the day at a smiths forge while he adapted a front top leaf to fit. I didn't give it a hope of lasting but it's still
hanging in there. At the same time Ed had a 12 hr day with customs clearing spares.

We do seem to lurch from one minor disaster to the next.

Two days later we managed to punch a small hole in the new fuel tank. Its the first time I've seen Ed's shoulders drop. But it was his idea to make a wooden peg
for the hole. And belted well in, its there for the duration.

We've had a pretty trouble free run from then on, but watch this space because there is now a lot of transmission whine due to a poor oil seal.

The little bit of Russia we have seen is vast. The change from desert to alpine was almost instant and followed the Mongolian-Siberian border. At the same time the features of the people went from Asiatic to European almost completely.

The people we've met have, almost without exception, been interested, open and friendly. Ed and I have kept away from the rest of the rally during the day, eating snacks in the transport cafes; generally consisting of gallons of borscht and shashlik.

A lot of the time we have been following the course of the Volga, considering how far we are from any sea it is huge, in most parts at least 1/2mile wide. The day before yesterday we met up with the couple doing the same trip independently in a tiny pre-war Austin. Our trip is good, but how I would have loved to do it like that.

Tomorrow we are back in Europe proper with just a third of the trip left to do. But all of the cars, even the toughest, are getting a bit tired. I will try and add a few photos of the ex fuel tank the forge and other things, but it's quite hard because most days we really do not have a lot of time to stop.

Mongolia to Russia

Life has been a bit fraught to say the least recently. I can't really remember individual days, so lets do a resume of our adventures to date:

We left U B full of hope and armed with a little for-knowledge of what was in store. Sadly that for-knowledge lasted about two hours; a couple of route changes later and we were shot.

Over the subsequent days we've had three broken springs and two ruptured
fuel tanks. We’ve driven over 1000km with only the front brakes, and more than that with no hand brake.

Still it’s not all about breaking the car:

Mongolia was great but really took its toll on all the gear and drivers. Mind you, the locals, when we have had time to meet them, were great. On one particular night we arrived on a forecourt at 11pm having driven all day, by 7am we’d had a very short nights sleep and were ready to roll for the Mongolian/Russian border.

Two days into Russia and we had a rest day (ho-ho), that meant time to fit new springs and a new fuel tank as the old one was damaged. You can imagine the scene when they tried to change it, and the loud bang. Since then it’s been more or less the same, apart from the odd spring going, a leaky fuel tank and the brakes. We are still hanging in there though.

That’s all for time being

John and Ed are currently spending their nights, when they’re not out boozing with the locals, taking it in turns to cuddle the fluffy lion they discovered in the back of the car… bless.

Mongolian Recce

Here are a few pictures from the recce in Mongolia.

Hello just a quicky, because this is the last day in Beijing.

I'm realy glad that we got out here early because otherwise we would have seen
nothing of the city which would have been criminal ,sort of. If I can do it again,I'll post a few more photos of the city.



Tomorrow is our first day on the road, out to the great wall, which is
the start of the rally, then one more night in china a camp on the border.
Then we're on to UB (again) where we get a day off.

Will get back to you then.

UB to Altay and Back... Just

Well, we're back in Beijing again and have mamanged to join up with the rest of the crew. We all collected our cars from customs this morning; 140 cars, and every one started. A miracle. If I turn round now I can see all of them parked 15 floors below me.

The recci in Mongolia was well worth it. Apart from being really enjoyable, we got a good feel of what the conditions will be like next week. The roads are bloody awful, when they are not closed for repair that is. The tracks just fan out like streams in a river delta. All of them are usually ok except the most used one, that's normally a cross between a nomad ger and the recycling bin of a vodka shop. They do like a drop; but then it looks like a pretty tough life for a sober man to handle.

Despite all of the assurances, our local flight from Altay in the west to UB was cancelled without notice on the day. This left us with very few options; we could sit it out in the hope that the plane turned up the following day the 23rd; or Amran our driver/super-hero said he could get us back over 1000km in the 30 hrs we had before the flight from UB to Beijing.

After all of these months of effort the thought of missing the start of the rally was looming large. So we went for the super-hero 1000k in a Russian mini bus with a top speed of 85-90kph and the charicteristics of a series two land rover. All of that on 150k of good B road and the rest broken tarmac or dirt track. We made it in 23 hrs with one driver who had no sleep.

Ulaan Baatar; bit of a dump, but bloody fantastic

Hi everyone,

Well, that's another of lifes little ambitions sorted.

Ulaan Baatar, or U.B. as we locals like to call it, is a right dump but what a fantastic one. The strongest infleuence until 10 years ago was the soviet union. With that lot leaving guite a few of their hang ups, and winters that would eat away at the fabric of any construction, the place looks as if it is just about to fall apart. But it is still a great place to visit.

Tomorrow we head west in our Soviet jeep. With guide, Esengul; very pretty, and driver, not so good looking.

We are Driving SW for 4 days, some of the time on roads we will be using in the austin, but for the most part hoping to visit different places.
We fly back to U.B. on the 22nd and return to Beijing late on the 23rd.

Not Long Now

Right two days to go and I think I might be getting just a bit nervous,or exited I'm not sure which but I'v got that hollow empty feeling that I get when something big in my life is about to happen.

I fly to Biejing on wednesday,meeting Ed there on the thursday. The plan is to do a recce along the Mongolian part of the rally using a jeep hired from a local tour company.We should be able to cover about half of that section in the time we have available.

I should have something a little more interesting than plans to tell you about by then...