So here we sit. Day one. We’re in the car-park of Goodwood Motor Circuit in the UK, famous for racing high-class and high-powered vehicles. But not today. Today Goodwood is filled with hundreds of cars, vans and bikes that you wouldn’t even let your nanna drive. From 1968 wooden beasts to two-door Smart cars, and everything in between, Goodwood is littered with decorated rally cars and excited teams, anxiously awaiting their honorary lap of the Circuit before we head off in a mighty convoy to Dover where we cross over to the continent. And as we sit and take it all in, it’s hard to believe that yesterday our trusty steed “Matilda” broke down on the hill into Goodwood…
So how did we get this far? Surely we’ve been spending the last three weeks cautiously preparing for such an arduous adventure… right? Wrong. We faffed. We spent three weeks in the UK faffing about, camping and driving, and sleeping on couches. We became professional faffers, and part-time alcoholics. Don’t judge – it’s cold in Scotland! There’s nothing better to do!
I departed sunny England to head up north to Edinburgh for the first official “Don’t Be Russian Us” team meeting… at the pub. That turned into another pub. And then back home to Dale’s mates house… for more wine. I had checked myself into a ripping little hostel called Containers – made entirely out of shipping containers. But we all agreed that we needed to get out of the city and hit the rolling hills of the Scottish Highlands. So we packed up Matilda and hit the road heading north. With no real plan of where we were going or where we were camping, we managed to find a nice little camping area… better known to the locals as the dog walking track. Whatever, it worked for us.
The following day it was time for me to have my second ever driving lesson in a manual. What better place to learn than in the Scottish Highlands with several hills, blind corners, and tiny B-roads barely wide enough to fit our Nissan Micra. Talk about getting thrown in the deep end! I’d like to say that I rose to the challenge and successfully steered the team north to Inverness, but instead I stalled several times including on a steep incline on a blind corner… oops! With the stresses of the drive weighing on our shoulders, we hot-footed it to Tomatin Distillery for some much needed scotch tastings! With a bit of booze to warm us from the inside out, we headed towards the famous Loch Ness, and found ourselves a perfect little place to pitch the tent right on the banks of the Loch. The still water with the rolling green hills reflected, the sights were incredible… actually, not all of them.
We headed back to Edinburgh for the weekend before we began the journey down south to Goodwood for the start of the Rally. T minus ONE WEEK! With the boys doing nothing but faffing and sleeping until 1pm, I decided to get my tourist on at the hostel. Unfortunately the hostel was booked out for the weekend, so I stole Matilda, parked her out front and she was to be my home for a couple of nights. Thankfully the legends at Containers still let me use the facilities…. well, I say they “let” me, I kind of just pretended I was staying there. We had a BBQ on the Saturday night with several ciders, an inflatable hot tub and dancing on the container’s roof. The following morning myself, a Texan and a Canadian decided to be productive and head up Arthur’s Seat, the Harry Potter graveyard, have a Sunday roast, watch the Wimbledon final and head out on a Edinburgh Ghost Tour through the underground Damnation Alley… which I spent most of gripping onto the boys for dear life.
Monday hit and it was time to start heading south. Our first stop was to the Lakes District in the north of England. We arrived early evening and were struggling to find a place to camp. Eventually we lost phone reception, and thus any sense of direction, and so we kicked it old school. We pulled over, knocked on a house and asked for directions to a place where we could pitch a tent. The kind farmer pointed us about 5 miles down the road to a man who lets people camp in his backyard… and who “really likes Lord of the Rings”. Yup. That’s all the information we got. Unsure of exactly which house he was talking about, we kept our eyes peeled for clues. Thankfully the “Aragon” sign on the property gates and the 5’2” man with a dwarf bowl cut and a beard standing out the front was a dead give-away. While we loved the idea of a LOTR themed camp site, his lucrative offer of £7 per person for the night was a little out of our £0 accommodation budget. So we bid him farewell, drove down towards Haweswater Reservoir and found a beautiful little parking space on the side of the road for the night.
The following day we headed for a drive around the Lakes District. Beautiful winding roads, through rolling English country-side scattered with lakes and reservoirs. We were making our way to my mate from India Tom’s house in Blackburn who had kindly offered to house myself and the boys. On our way we decided to swing by the beautiful Western coast for a nice view of the beach. Well. To be fair, we probably shouldn’t have expected much more from a British beach, but Morecombe was honestly abysmal. It was mud for as far as the eye could see, but that didn’t stop the enthusiastic Pom’s sunning themselves in the balmy 18 degree weather. We hot-footed out of Morecombe and finally made our way to Tom’s, where a nice shower, a few cold beers and a home-cooked lasagne awaited us. The joys of a home-cooked meal will never get old. We headed down to the local pub for Tuesday Night Quiz Night where myself and the boys added very little knowledge to the team. Particularly when an Australian question was asked and we had absolutely NO idea of the answer – who knew that Australia was originally called New Holland?! Not us!
From Manchester to Leicester, another one of my travel buddies from Myanmar, Mel, kindly offered her home to us for the next couple of nights. This is when the magic started to happen. This is when we finally would start working on the car and getting stuff organised for the Rally. Luckily there was very minimal work to do on the car, save for a short in the electrical circuit that affected the dash and rear lights. We needed an auto-electrician, and we needed one that day. So, we were left with little choice but to drop the “charity card”. “Excuse me kind sir, we are driving half way around the world FOR CHARITY and we need this fixed before we leave Leicester tomorrow…”. Thankfully, the lads from AC Electrical managed to squeeze us in and sort us out. Not only did they provide three hours of service and parts – they did it all for FREE! What legends! The problem was fixed, mind you, if it gets dark we have to pull over, pop the bonnet and flick the light switch… Yes. Our car has a light switch.
Our roof racks also failed to arrive in time, but luckily Michael’s inner handy-man was itching to reveal himself. He spotted a pile of old wooden crates at Mel’s house, headed to the hardware store and started drilling holes in the roof of the car. It amazing what you can actually do to a car if you completely don’t care about it. Things were starting to come together. We had handmade wooden roof racks bolted to the car roof, we had a light switch under the bonnet, and we had spare parts ready to go. The only thing missing now was Michael and I’s passports. But that was nothing a quick overnight visit to London and a fleeting night out with Charlotte wouldn’t fix.
Saturday. T minus ONE DAY ’til Launch. We were on our way to Goodwood Motor Circuit where the official Launch Party was about to kick off. That’s not before we drained the battery in the middle of London and had to push start her. BUT… Nevertheless… Excited and in high spirits with tunes pumping and myself behind the wheel, we headed south. Until the old girl started to lose power. Up a hill. On a blind corner. I panicked and drove her off the road and more-or-less into a bush. We nursed her all the way to the nearest town, sitting in low gears and conking out every so often – mostly up hills. One day out, and the car was stuffed. Michael and Dale used their boy-brains to try and figure out what was wrong and concluded that it could be the fuel filter. Apparently that filters the fuel. So we bought the part and the boys watched and YouTube video on how to change it… and success! We cruised into Goodwood happy, confident and ready to pimp out Matilda.
The field was full of car and bikes, ralliers and relatives, and excitement levels were high. We spent the majority of the night with two legendary Aussie guys who were doing the Rally on a motorbike and a British dude called Lucky who was driving a dragon-car solo. These boys were doing it tough, so the least we could do was share a few G&T’s while we discussed their stupidity.
The Launch went well, except for a slight hiccup of draining the battery – AGAIN. So we started our honorary lap of Goodwood with a push start, is there any better way? The horns were beeping, the engines were revving and the decorated vehicles burned their way at a top speed of 40miles an hour around the Circuit.
And so it begins. The Mongol Rally 2015 has officially launched… Now to conquer Europe.
allama withabackpack 