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.