MicraGolia - Driving the Mongol Rally

After making sure the BBQ wasn’t going to set fire to anything in the garden Kim and I shot off from our own fundraising event (how rude), nervously leaving the rugby fans drinking beer at my home! But it had to be done, after an epic Silver link/london tube/damn we’re at the wrong wapping station journey we arrived at the First meeting of the Mongol Ralliers - only 4 hours late, and 2 hours after we had left home!

We arrived mid question & answer session… and were immediately panicked by the number of knowledgable technical questions being asked - radio frequencies?? log books?? do we have one of those?? feeling some-what worried with no pre-prepared questions (except.. where is mongolia again? and are we really doing this??) we decided to turn to the bar man for help. He did magnificantly , with a small exchange of money we were had a corona in hand, and then another, and then another… and within a couple of hours we had built up a nice beer-fuelled confidence and seeming know-it all attititude which fooled people nicely.

By the end of the evening we went home merry, having met a bunch of new friends and become very very excited (but not any less scared) about starting our trip! Yeay 21st July.. bring it on!

Hi all. Apologies for not updating the website sooner, we have been working away at Mongol rally fundraising.. even if we don’t get round to admitting it on-line. 

On the last bank holiday (26-28th May) we had a busy weekend of fundraising and Mongol Rally preparations. We kicked off with a successful rugby-watching-fundraising-bbq .. and the rain just about held off for us. Successful from the fundraising and fun point of view, not so on the rugby front. The numbers of Brits attending (7+1 England supporting Aussie) may have out wieghed the number of SA boys (5), but unfortunately there were no cries of swing low sweet chariot ringing through the air.. more happy Saffa shouting masking the quiet muffled sobs from the Brits hiding in the corner.

Despite the brits being upset at the score, and the Saffas complaining about the uselessness of not only british.. but british girls.. “braaing”, all it all it was an enjoyable afternoon (any way it wasn’t a Braai it was a BBQ and therefore the sausages are meant to be burnt… that’s how we always eat em in the Northern Hemisphere!)

We are holding another fundraising BBQ,on June 23rd, this time with out rugby.. hopefully with more sun.. and maybe games?? any suggestions welcome!

This is your chance to make your mark on our car.. literally…

Help us decorate our car! We are selling patch work stickers for our car. For just £2 you can buy your own white vinyl car sticker. It is then yours to decorate/write a message on/cut into small shapes. All vinyl stickers must then be returned to either Kim or Nettie by the 19th of July, when they will be stuck on the little Passion.

 There will be a prize for the most imaginative patch, so get your artistic thinking hats on!

 We will be holding a cake sale on 2nd & 3rd of June at the BCU Regatta at the National Watersports Centre Nottingham. If you are competing or coming to watch the racing don’t forget to bring some change! 

Yeek, realisation is beginning to hit… the rally is only 9 weeks away and we have unspeakable amounts still to do. 

Thank you to all that have sponsored us, we have raised £410 so far for our charities. If you haven’t sponsored us yet please do, we still need to collect another £590 to reach our target.

I’ve put up a few more pages (see right).. there is a proposed route plan (and yup thats it so far as route planning goes!) there’s also a kit list .. if you are able to donate anything to us which is on this list (or not on this list but you think might be useful) please email us - team@micragolia.com

The little passion mobile is looking great having been jazzed up with glitzy silver stickers (provided by chirosport).. a true rally car in the making.

A quick little update for you all..

Yesterday was eventful. The car door handle fell off. It now resides in my handbag (handbag.. essential peice of mongolian adventurer kit). On top of this the little passion mobile got its first parking fine… oops, damn those yellow lines.

Kim has been posted down to deepest darkest cornwall for a teaching placement, she claims to have no internet or mobile phone signal… something about being in the dark age.. I put it down to an excuse to have a break from Rally organisation!

 In more exciting news, 1000 shiny team micragolia leaflets arrived at my house today, even better they were already neatly folded for us too!!! Thank you Aston Colour Press! Hopefully these will help us get underway with finding more sponsors.. and quickly, July doesn’t seem that far away anymore…

Yesterday evening Kim and I picked up the car from Rox’s and took the little “passion” for a spin. We have been so fortunate in being given this car, taxed, MOT-ed and it even has metallic paint!

We have a new sponsor too, Dr Clifton of Chirosport is kindly paying for our little micra to be jazzed up with proffessional vinyl silver stickers advertising our website, the rally and our charities.

We have raised £110 towards our charities so far, only £890 to go!!

We are slowly recovering from a busy Easter weekend supporting crews paddling the DW (congrats to the Richmond crews taking 1st and 2nd place). Having caught up on sleep, we are beginning to get rolling with Mongol Rally organisation…

 Sean Martin of Aston Colour Press is kindly printing us 1000 leaflets which will be distributing, publicising our challenge, fundraising efforts and appealing for team sponsors. Our spangly new website, made for us by Nick Garner, is all up and running, as is our home page on the Mongol Rally website where text messages that we send during our trip will be displayed.

 Tomorrow we are collecting our Nissan Micra “Passion” from Roxanne Marffy who has donated her car to us. Much excitement at the prospect of taking it for a drive and getting the first of (hopefully) many stickers on it!

Photos sure to follow….

If you haven’t already, please sponsor us! You can donate to either (or both!) of our chosen charities..

Mercy Corps

or

Hope and Homes for Children

Team Micragolia

Nettie Kelly and Kim Wetherall, members of Richmond Canoe Club, are hanging up their racing vests for the Summer and exchanging their intensive tea drinking fuelled training sessions for some serious adventure, whilst raising as much money as possible for two hugely worthwhile charities: Mercy Corps and Hope and Homes for Children.

The Challenge
Travel a third of the way around the earth, from Hyde Park, London to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. 10,000 miles, 7 mountain ranges, 2 deserts , roads ranging from bad to non-existent, all in a car that has an engine with no more than 1 litre of power.

Our adventure starts on July 21st 2007 from Hyde Park. We will be one of two hundred teams starting this years rally, our vehicle of choice — a 998cc Nissan Micra, kindly donated by Roxanne Dunn.

We Need Your Help

In order to compete in The Mongol Rally, we need to raise a minimum of £1000 for our chosen charities. In addition to this we need to find team sponsors and fundraise enough money to enable us to complete our challenge.

Last year the Mongol Rally raised over £200,000 for charity, this year they are hoping to top that and raise 1/4million pounds.