Trabzon ıs stıll amazıng!

After a two day drıve (shorter than expected thanks to really good roads) we arrıved ın Trabzon last nıght. Unfortunately we wıll only be able to get the ferry to Russıa tomorrow nıght but thıs has caused an absolutely brıllıant day! We spent the day fıxıng up the cars (three ın convoy now sınce we met up wıth team Loud Noıses yesterday) which has gone really well as I thint the oıl leak has been cured on the second attempt.



The local guys at the car park we were workıng ın brought out two rounds of free Turkısh tea whıch was great. We then headed back towards town to fınd the ınernet...and we were greeted by an excellent guy called Mustafa Kemal Aycicek, the owner of a local kiosk. Incredıbly I am sat in saıd Kıosk usıng the ınternet to update the blog! To make things better I am serving all his customers at the same time and drınkıng more free tea. He is also a black sea area journalist and ıs (hopefully) going to get us in the local press! (http://www.karadenizolay.com/sayfa.asp?sayfaID=1)




Sorry about the sporadıc use of ı not i as the keyboard ıs in Turkısh and is a bit dıfferent! I could contınue wıth the stories but some should be kept for our return.

Love Will and Jules

Romania, Bulgaria and Istanbul....

Right, haven't posted for a while so got loads to write

Still with the team 'Two Muppets and a car' we left Budapest (thankfully getting out wasn't half as bad as getting in) and crossed into Romania. Spying a nice little side road off the main road we went up it to find somewhere to camp. The first sign that something was up was when we passed an army camp with loads of rusting military vehicles outside. We then saw a load of military helicopters and a military airfield on the other side of the road. Going round a corner these massive gates appeared across the road with armed guards - we had driven straight into a military zone! The quickest and neatest emergency stop and U-turn was immediately implemented and Tallulah has never accelerated so quickly as we sped out of there! Camped a few miles further on at the head of the valley and we treated to the most spectacular demonstration of Romanian air power as the booms of afterburners filled the valley and jets from the aforementioned airfield streaked into the sky. These were followed minutes later by bright flashes on the horizon as they dropped live bombs on a training mission! This whole spectacular was naturally accompanied by a beer and a cigar apiece - not a bad camping spot all in all!

Woke up surrounded by cows and continued on the slog to Bucharest. Romania is the most beautiful country and we had a great drive through the mountains. Got lost on the outskirts of Bucharest trying to find the ring road but after asking locals and using a compass (both far more reliable than maps we have found) we found the ring road. Banish all thoughts of a dual-lane tarmac affair - it was a rotting potholed affair with lots of traffic. We were entertained by the lunatic overtaking manouvers (general rule: if you don't mind driving your car off-road then you can) and the astonishing industrial waste land of derelict soviet building projects.

Rattled (literally) on through Bulgaria where we lost our fuel cap and one headlight gave up the ghost (our team name is very apt!) and up a corking road to the border crossing with Turkey. Met the angriest border guard ever and the other team had issues because they left their V5 Proof of Ownership document at home before camping just inside Turkey. This time treated to a natural spectacular as an electrical storm raged on the horizon. Sadly we had no beer this time but we soldiered on anyway.

Arrived in Istanbul which is incredible. I'm not going to try to describe the buzz and the sights and the sounds but watching the mosques turn orange in the setting sun was pretty spectacular. After food we found a completely random Shisha bar in the grounds of the "Turkish and Balkan Cultural affairs" behind a graveyard (the dead centre of town chortle chortle) and spent an enjoyable evening drinking Turkish tea and smoking shisha before moving on to a bar with a collection of other ralliers.

Eating yoghurt and honey on the roof terrace this morning for breakfast looking across Istanbul and at ships sailing from the Black Sea through the Bophoros (the gates to Asia and the great divide between West and East) to the Sea of Marmara whilst sitting in the sun wasn't a bad way to start the day. Walked into Asia after breakfast to try and sort out a ferry which brings us up to know - back in Europe still trying to sort a ferry across the Black Sea.

So everything is pretty good!

Love jules and will xx

Budapest

Just spent the night in Budapest which is somewhat of a miracle as they have the most viscous one-way system known to man! However this meant that after being directed through almost every street we had seen most of the city before we even got out the car! Had time to do a bit of sightseeing before a few beers last night with some other Mongolists. Beautiful city but would be nice to have a bit more time here. We're off to Buccarest now.

Car update: the old girl is sadly not so good. In torrential rain one of the windscreen wipers decided it had had enough and ceased to be. The cabin could also be described as far from weather proof - whenever it rains we get very wet feet. Fortunately this isn''t adding weight to the car as we are spewing oil at about the same rate as water comes in due to a cracked sump (ask a boy to explain girls). In fact if any of you want to find us just follow the oil trail down Europe's motorways!

Love as ever, Will and Jules xx

Prague & The story so far!

So I guess Ill start from the beginning, quite a lot has happened already!

The trip to dover and ferry cossing was really good, met up with a load of Mongol Rally guys and had a beer. We started on out own way towards belgium but was passed by and sometimes hovered with a constant stream of mongol rally cars. The spirit was much like the trip out of London, a lot of horn usage and waving...and another thing, the hard shoulder is like a third lane to the Mongol Rally! One unfortunate car broke down 8 miles from Hyde Park but most are doing OK. We stopped overnight for about 5 hours just after Achen at about 1am and got a few hours sleep before continuing the drive. I'm glad that we don't have do do that mileage every day, it takes a long time at 55mph. Everyone was really tired on arrival in the Czech Republic. Most people didn't sleep on the first night, or only for an hour or two.

The next day the drive was boring, right across germany. Nice scenery but dull roads, it was also a bit demoralising being passed by BMs, Audis, Mercs and even lorries doing up to 120mph estimated (for the former three!). After lunch a load of cars passed by, thankfully, as we broke down on a Autobahn around Frankfert! We had to push the car to a break in the barrier and ended up with 4 cars stopped to help. We got it going after about 15mins, the points gap had closed up. The rest of the drive to Czechout (the party) was in a convoy of 5.

We arrived at the Czechout party at spot on 1930, the designated start time! After some navigational confusion (we had really bad maps and the bit of Czech that we arrived in was very badly signed) Jules and I lead the convoy on a very raural route to Klenova castle. The party was awesome, dance rooms in the vaults of the ruined castle and a main stage in the courtyard...really magical! It was like a mini festival in a castle! We met up with a couple of guys who have the same visa dates for Russia as us. I think that we will travel with them to Russia via the black sea ferry and then part. Everone else is out shopping as I type.

Many people had pretty serious car problems (one car had fuel streaming out of it almost constantly and was on repair number 3)...but the red bus managed to arrive at 1am! Tallulah is doing well, running sweeter than ever and actually seems to perform much better than most of the other cars. We do have some worries about the rear suspension which seems to be struggling a bit (it bottoms all the time on any rough roads). We also have a continuing oil leak but at the current rate we should be OK just to leave it. If it gets much worse some action may be required. I checked the points with the textbook feeler gague, a bit of cardboard! She seems to be doing about 25mpg, which is OK and means that we can do around 200 miles on a tank. We ran out once however. Unlike most cars when the gague hits the bottom of the last quarter it really is empty, hopefully we will not repeat that too often!

We are now in a hostel in Prague and will leave soon, we saw a lot of the city last night and its raining now so not the best sightseeing weather! From what we have seen it is a really nice place, amazing archetecture and cobbled streets. Its a bit of a pity that it is really touristy but really interesting none the less. Not exactly sure where we are going to head to now but will will end up in Istabul around the 28th--that will probably be the next update--camping untill then!

Sorry about the lack of pictures, I forgot my cable. We will try and pick one up so I can post some from Istanbul. Have to sign out for now.

The Long Break Down Begins

So it seems that Will and Jules are doing well, and have a bit of a convoy going on.


Better late than never, to make up for a lack of pictures, here are some from the start line at Hyde Park.

A good crowd turned up to cheer them off, Mums, Dads, family and friends..

A few last minute tests proved that everything was in (nearly) full working order..

A quick pose for the cameras..

Off to the starting gate..

And through the start line.

Here are some snaps of some of the other slightly more wacky vehicles taking part....

An old Bristol bus (but made in Germany apparently)

Pigs might fly, but they can definately drive!

A mobile phone!

A stretch Volvo (mobile phone standing up on the Mini, in the background!)

Who needs GPS!!

And last but not least, a mongolian wrestler, laying out one pretty brave guy described to him via translator as England's strongest man!

Keep it up Will and Jules! love Em and Darren xx

The Bell at Aldworth

Firstly a big thank you to all those at The Bell pub last night - we raised £105 and had great fun showing our mighty vehicle off to all and sundry. Also thanks to The Bell for their kind donation of a brand new beer garden umbrella which may prove especially useful if we ever have to use it for parachute braking when going down a mountain pass. A wonderful evening was had by all!

Thanks to Will's hard work the car has a new and considerably better radiator (this one feels less like it's made out of papier mache) and some decent off road tyres. The interior trim has also been carefully restored to its original 'luxury' level.

I'm taking the car tomorrow for its most gruelling testing yet - the mean streets of south London. Hopefully spare wheels and fog lights will still be on it by Saturday!

Random Pics

Everyone loves pictures so here are some more random ones from the last week or so!

Most of the time the mechanics were working hard... (Tom lent his expert electrical engineering hand for a couple of days)









...but you have to do something to pass the time whilst working!



Vicki (Jules other half) bought us a very nice Thorontons chocolate Mongol Rally car (actually a Mazda MR2...wish we had one of those!) which has been devoured. Not before taking some silly pictures!

The Route

I have managed to get this far without giving any indication of where we will actually be going, and believe it or not we did bother to plan a route...so long ago that I can't remember! Jules has confirmed that a ferry across the Black Sea (from Trabzon to Sochi, the site of the 2014 winter Olympics, for all those interested) does exist, making our provisional route more definite. I have tried to give a very rough global overview below.



We picked a fairly "scenic" route, and have allowed plenty of time to actually see some of the places we pass through, I know that many people barely stop driving and make it really fast but don't actually see anything. We decided that its better to take a bit more time and have a more enjoyable trip, anyone who has been in the car will know that spending all day every day in it would not be that much fun, even with the Volvo seats!

Wheels and Radiator!

The last day or so has been pretty productive, yesterday afternoon I took a trip to get some bits for the car, expecting to get 4 wheels/tires and a radiator...in fact I got:

- 4 wheels/tires (2 of them nice Goodyears)
- 2 radiators
- an alternator
- 5 spark plugs
- 4 HT leads
- 2 distributor caps
- a rotor arm
- a shock absorber
- and some random bits!

So not a bad haul pretty much for free, and the best bit was a CD with virtually every piece of documentation on Suzuki jeeps that exists, which is a massive bonus! The upshot of all this is that Tallulah now has a full set of decent tires and two spares, along with a new radiator. The radiator is off a 1.3l SJ not the 1l so required some work to modify. It should however prevent any overheating in the hot conditions we expect.

A new air filter has also been fitted (some effort to get that spare...) and more decals have been finished, that car now looks pretty good!

Tallulah

Our car was purchased a month or so ago from the source of all goods that is eBay, and on collection the owner informed us that the "SJ410" we were removing was actually called "Tallulah". It's never a good start to re-name a vessel (judging by the handling this classification is in fact correct) so the name stays. Long live Tallulah.

Despite the cute name several issues were apparent. The first of which was the state of the bodywork. This is however not a problem, the more destroyed the better in terms of rally cred, so no action (apart from decoration!) has been taken to straighten her out. On that note a quick picture of the racing stripe and some signage being painted:





The gearbox and transfer case (yes a car this small can be 4x4) caused some concern due to loud noises and excessive vibration but after much inspection, deliberation and a pinch of laziness the only action taken to rectify has been liberal lubrication. The noise is less...and hopefully will not prove fatal in the next 10000 miles!

Some other major work that has been done to date:
-Seats swapped for some much more comfy Volvo items, which involved the fun task of disarming the SIPS airbag explosive charges!





-A mounting for the second spare tire on the bonnet has been made and fitted, thanks to Owen for his expert welding (and welder!).



This brings the story roughly up to date, the blog proper can begin!

The Idea

After a short discussion over a student magazine and around ten seconds of thought, of course in a lecture, it was decided that we (Jules Wayne and Will McGeehin) would embark on the Mongol Rally. At Some Point. Four years later it has finally come to be...the preparations are under way!

At this point I will diverge to sponsorship, our fundraising website is:

http://www.willwemakeit.com/thelongbreakdown

We have to make a total of at least £1000 towards our charities to run in the rally, any support would be greatly appreciated.

The idea was born from an article about the first mass Mongol Rally in 2004 and the event seemed and excellent way to see the world, raise some money for charity and have a great time. After reading the small print, which specifies the car must have a 1l engine and many aids such as GPS are frowned upon, did the challenge of the event become apparent. We are however up for the job and the story can pick up at the preparation stage!