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.