And they’re off…..
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..