ATW 2010 forwards

Departure Minus 1 Week.

Still at Home
Us and the bikes on a cold February morning.
Everything is packed, we just need to organise ourselves.

First proper entry will be posted once we are under way.

This is at our last stop before heading off, at Bob’s brother David’s place in Surrey.

Harbour at Vada, northern Italy.

11th March – Made an executive decision to travel down Italy’s leg to avoid the snowstorms etc in northern Italy and Balkans. Found small pension right on the harbour at Vada. Bob took the accompanying photo, which his Dad would be ever so proud of.
12th March – Motorway miles to head south. Lovely mountains on left and Med sea on right.

Phrases you thought you’d never hear. Here’s Bob cooking tea! The best rice I’ve ever tasted.

30th March - moved to Alexandropoulis, 40 km from Turkish border.

The nylon shell-suit is alive and well in living in the Eastern-bloc countries of Bulgaria and Romania. I’ve never felt so bang-on-trend!

April 15th - Border crossing between Romania, Moldova and Ukraine was a nightmare – had to go into Moldova twice, and got stung for a Green Card the second time. Stayed in a state-run hotel in Izmajil in Ukraine. When we booked in, we had to choose our breakfast for the following morning – “you may have porridge or one egg or one omelette, and tea” said the receptionist, and she wasn’t joking.

Our track is not only shown by our maps and GPS, but also by the increase in chocolate consumption. Bob seems to have kick-started the slab chocolate distribution industry single-handedly – almost every bar we’ve bought has been close (or past) its sell-by-date, and we’re currently up to about 3 bars per day. So anyone following us through these countries will at least have ‘fresh’ bars to buy!

May 28th – there are probably worse places to be stuck than Ulaanbaatar, but at the moment, I can’t think where. We’re just leaking money here for some reason. I thought this part of Asia would be relatively cheap but not so. The shipping company are messing about, and the guy we’re dealing with seems not to understand words like ‘important to us’, ‘precious’, ‘all we own’. They don’t seem to have any idea of how to ship the bikes, and have just printed off the Internet a ‘how to prepare a bike for air-freight’ document. It’s all so frustrating.

June 14th – The shipping company operative has now decided that the fuel tanks should have been emptied, and that it’s too difficult for him to empty them, and would we like to post the keys, or return to UB to do it ourselves! What an idiot this guy is -we sent him a youtube video of how to siphon fluids. Decided to go to Cambodia for a couple of days, since the bikes seem to be going nowhere still.

July 10th – took the bikes to a car-wash place, to get them jet-washed. The Aussies are paranoid about dirt and dust on anything they import, so everything has to be show-room clean. Including us allegedly – that could prove a bit more difficult!

Since we’re now technically out of Asia, I thought we’d also include a generalised summary of what we’ve thought about Europe and Asia so far:

August 17th – started talking to a lady with a crash helmet who appeared at breakfast time. She was from Sydney (although originally from Bexhill years ago) and was touring round the coastal roads for 5 months. She’d come off her bike (F650GS), and it was being fixed at the same BMW dealer. So we swapped stories, realized we had a lot in common and got on really well. Lizzy was also responsible for our first trip in a police-car with Perth’s finest!

September 17th – travelling South through Ayr, Mackay and Gladstone, we realized we hadn’t seen the Great Barrier Reef yet, and were in danger of going past it. So we stopped at the strangely-named Town Of 1770 and treated ourselves by booking a day-trip to Lady Musgrave Island.

October 30th – dropped campervan off early, and got the Metro to the Airport. We reckon we’ve done another 1970 miles in the last 9 days on our second visit to Oz.

November 19th – Went past a place called Sheffield today. And we had to go through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint – they were looking for Mexican illegals, and they allegedly drop over the mountains into America.

November 20th - Went to the Alamo, in San Antonio, although the museum was more about the John Wayne film but very interesting nevertheless – another educational day.

And we had our first “we’ve been there” moment, when we watched Prince Caspian on TV, and the beginning showed Cathedral Cove (New Zealand).

December 2nd – Spent all day at the Kennedy Space Center, with a tour to the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, and as close to the launchpads as you can get. (There was supposed to be a Shuttle launch tomorrow, but it’s been postponed as they’d found some problems.) Saw an amazing Imax 3-D film about the Hubble Telescope. Another fantastic day.

Explorer – seemed apt somehow.

Well as promised, we’re off again. We arrived back in Sheffield just in time for Christmas, and just after the minus 15 temperatures Britain had been having. Needless to say when we arrived back all the pipes in the garage had burst, so the first two days were spent replacing those, so we had no heating and no water. Just as well we’re used to roughing it!

Our first trip included lots of natural disasters and extreme weather, but usually had the decency to wait until we’d got out of the country before happening. But not this trip.

Given the amount of coverage the snowy weather has been getting on the local TV, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s definitely not normal weather for this time of year. This was confirmed when it mentioned on CNN that Turkey was having their worst snow in 10 years – just our luck really. Sub-Saharan Africa is not going to know what‘s hit it once we get there!

April 19th: We seem to have broken Robert’s GPS completely (who’d have thought a piece of marine-standard equipment wouldn’t have liked being washed!), so it was good that Sheila had a back-up one, even though she had no idea how to use it. Fortunately it was a straight road out of Nairobi (Kenya) and into Tanzania.