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.