MicraGolia - Driving the Mongol Rally

We had a successful launch at Hyde Park in London, with 200 cars gathered for the start of the epic adventure - pictures hopefully coming soon (some are on facebook already). We left London at 1pm, with a quick driving parade up the mall, past buckingham palace and round parliment square.. we then got briefly lost (unfortunately there were a number of cars following us) but eventually made our way to the A2 and down to dover. By the evening we were in France and found ourselves in a convoy with 3 other cars, heading through belgium and germany and in to Czech. We drove all through the night, tough but made easier by being in a convoy and taking turns to lead.

We arrived in Prague by 1pm on Sunday, tired but not defeated, and highly amused to find that the hotel we had booked into was in the middle of the red light district! In the evening we headed to the rally party to meet up with other teams, there were a large number there, but also a significant number missing and many rumours were flying about teams blowing their engines on the german autobahn and such like. Teams kept arriving all through the night and we eventually retired to bed after midnight unable to wait up any longer for Team Goldenoeuf who had carburetter problems in Germany.

Monday morning we found Robin and Bojan - team goldenoeuf (who had arrived at the hotel at 2.30am), and together with team Starsky and Clutch, headed South to Packrac in Croatia. We were due to arrive at Packrac at 8pm, where Bojan’s family had laid on a dinner party with hog and lamb roast (traditional croatian food) but due to a complete underestimation didn’t arrive till 11.30pm!!! With the other teams who were on their way down arriving at 2am, and 4 teams stuck in Vienna and not making it down at all.

From Packrac we drove out croatia into Hungary, camped.. and got to Baia Mare in Romania to meet the team who runs Hope and HOmes for children here, have tv and press interviews, be given another great meal.. and internet!

Sorry this is such a hurried update, we are massively behind and have to get going.. some teams are already in Russia!!! ahhhhh!!!!

Moldova and then to Odessa in Ukraine.. here we come…

We have already been through 10 countries… quite a few more to go..

On Saturday 14th July we teamed up with Team “The Golden Oeuf, The World is not an Oeuf” (catchy name I know!) to complete the 21 Bridge Challenge  - “a mini charity parade” over each of the 21 bridges in the London A-Z, starting a Walton and finishing some 31/2 hours later at Tower Bridge.

The lads from “Golden Oeuf” had organised a radio interview that morning to raise awareness. This clearly had great effect as we had been at Walton for all of 5 minutes before a lady approached us and asked “are you the people going to mongolia? are you going to drive over 102 bridges today?” we all nod. Pause. Kim sheepishly asks if there are really 102 bridges in London.

The day gave us an opportunity to publicise our team, the event and was also good news our sponsors - Acergy and Paddlepoint - whos logos are now decorating our car. Bojan and Robin had set up a charity text number - 88999 - this number is now stuck on the side of our car. Please text the word “Support” to this number and 80p will be donated to our charities. (Texts cost £1.50) the number remains active for the next week.  We are hoping that lots of people texted as they saw the cars driving through London…

You may have noticed a few little changes on our car recently.. some fantastic new mud and snow tyres, a new door handle.. and if you are lucky enough to have been in it, a much smoother drive with a new clutch so that the car no longer vibrates.

The little passion has spent a week being prodded by handy mechanic Lynn at Surrey garage, where she has had been fully prepared for the epic adventure ahead. Passion is now sporting a metal underplate to protect the sump, a metal plate to protect the petrol tank, and a grill at the front to protect the radiator. She has a set of new tyres, ready to take on the kazahk dirt roads and a couple of spares in the boot. She has been fitted with new hoses and clips, ht leads, accelerator cable, clutch, clutch cable etc etc they even fixed the window winding handle so it no longer falls off everytime you drive round a corner!

 This service has been an absolute life saver, and with 10 days to go we now know that we have a car worthy of the 10,000 mile trip. We cannot thank Roger Clarke, who sponsored our service, enough, as well as Lynn and all the mechanics at Surrey Garage who kindly used their skills to transform our 10 year old town-driving nissan micra into a true rally machine!

Well, if you’ve ever thought of shaking off the cobwebs, throwing on a back pack and heading off on an adventure yourself, get in the know how and come along to a talk by the experts.

In a South American special, Peter Hutchinson will be providing us with a glimse into Adventures in the Amazon, in advance of his new Amazon travel guide, while Pablo will give us all the tips on planning a gruelling expedition to Patagonia - not one for the weak hearted!

If you are at all interested in finding out how the travel gurus do it, learning more about the wonders of South america, or just fancy a glass of wine and an interesting evening, email us at team@micragolia.com for tickets.

The talk will be held this friday, July 6th at 7pm, and the Organic Cafe, inside Langtons book shop, church street, twickenham. Tickets in advance only. Tickets cost £5 and include wine and nibbles.

Thank you to all who came to our party on friday, many good reports have been had and we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. Thank you to our great singer, Jon who, despite micraphone failure, provided us with some great tunes, much appreciated.

On Friday June 29th we are having a massive fundraising party at Richmond Canoe Club

We are planning cocktails, live music and lots of dancing. Tickets are £10 and include first drink and munchies.

Time: 8pm- 12pm

Contact Netty or Kim to get your tickets/ name on guest list!

Open to all feel free to bring friends!   

On Saturday 23rd, yes this saturday, we are having our second fundraising BBQ in aid of our little adventure. Please come along to Kim’s House from 2pm for food and drink, after a small donation of course!

All proceeds as you know go towards our two charities and our funds for the trip 

Just a quick thank you to everyone who has donated on our just giving sites, we have now raised £535 towards our charities. Both Hope and Homes for Children and Mercy Corps are really worthwhile charities, and your donations will go far I’m sure. 

We have to raise £1000 for charity, it is one of the few rally rules, so if you have not yet sponsored us please do at:

Mercy Corps - www.justgiving.com/micragolia

Hope and Homes for Children - www.justgiving.com/micragolia2

The National Canoe and Kayak Flatwater Sprint Racing Championships - the National Watersports Centre, Nottingham. Fantastic sunshine, great racing conditions and lots of hungry athletes. No better place to sell cake. And cake we did sell.

 Thanks to all those hungry munchers.. your contributions make a huge difference!

Bank holiday monday. May 28th. The coldest, wettest, and most definately windiest May 28th to ever be recorded (ref: reliable source.. Netties memory). But despite the grumpy looking grey clouds, we woke at 6am and crawled into the micra… and yes we did literally crawl into it.. who would have thought you could fit so many car boot sale items (otherwise known as junk) into such a small little car. The suspension struggled, so did the passengers, with a vacuum cleaner handle sticking into my shoulder, a curtain pole sticking into my back, a fold up table and gazeebo fighting for room with my head and a back street boys poster tangled round the feet… then we drove, armed with thick coats wooly hats and gloves we were all ready to do battle with the car boot sale. Had it not been cancelled. But we would not be defeated. We drove again. The second one was cancelled. We drove again, the third was cancelled. We drove again. The fourth one was cancelled. All because of a little bit of rain and ground flooding. Pathetic.

Feeling deflated we decided to head home, wondering how much we could sell on ebay, with strict orders from Kim’s dad that NONE of the items in the car were ever to be seen by him again. As we headed back in to twickenham we noticed what appeared to be fair setting up on the green.

A couple of cheeky request later, some very kind and generous organisers, we were all smiles again, our gazeebo was up our table out… we had our own stall at Twickenham Fair! Mercy Corps and Hope for homes posters flying (literally as the wind kept blowing everything away, including us and the gazeebo) we attracted many buyers to our amazing popular stall! Trevor and Francis kindly came to our aid, with spare wooly hats to fight off the cold and fresh enthusiasm for staffing our stall. We were a near sell out.. and even managed to sell the chairs we were sitting on!

Thank you so much to the organisers of Twickenham fair who completely turned our desolate day into a fantastically successful one. Pictures coming soon!