Leaving Party(11th April 2009)

So, after so much planning and waiting we had to leave eventually. And to leave you must a) Be Ready b) Have a leaving do. You would have thought to get ready given a 3 year notice period we would have plenty of time, but as most overlanders try and explain, it is just impossible to enter this period without being in a status of panic (read previous blogs as well!) . Our last two weeks before leaving were the most stress either of us had experienced - ever! The amount of paperwork you must get through to get you affairs in order is incredible - ranging from Power of Attorney to ensuring the tax office knows where you are. On top of that add closing down Ollie's company, bedding in the cats to their new home, renting out the house, re-mortgaging the house, and more, and you get two stressed bunnies! Well that stress is now well and truly gone.

Before we left we had decided upon having a big leaving do in Cornwall, and we were incredibly lucky to have most of our close friends and family come along. As mentioned before, we had booked out a lovely youth hostel, ordered a DIY hog roast and arranged a bouncy castle for the nippers to expend their energy on. Add to these ingredients some unexpected fine weather and you get a superb party! Thanks to all those who came and made this such a memorable day in our lives. Even Ollie had tears in his eyes, but apparently that was caused by a bit of stray crackling! After the day party, there was the brilliant night party, at Ollie's dad's, where those with hair left let it down a little before warming up their hands with a nice cup of cocoa.

 

Before moving onto the rest of our trip we must say a few thank you's to all the people who helped us over the past few weeks, without doubt we would have either cracked up or given up without them. In no particular order:

Thank you to Becky (Ollie's sis) for putting us up for the craziest two weeks of our lives, and giving the cats such a perfect new home. To Lee (Jenny's bro), for all the hard work and time he has put into Dino. To Ollie's Mum, Wendy, whose internet cafe was the most perfect place to dot our i's and cross our t's. To Jenny's parents who helped with the monster mission of clearing the Southampton house. To Ollie's dad, Bob, who helped prevent drunken oblivion at the party by hiding the grand marnier, along with his infinite patience with Dino. To Jenny's sister Lorna, who helped with most of our legal requirements, and promised that she won't fiddle Ollie out of his pension. To Ollie's sister Vicky, who helped prescribe all the drugs Ollie and Jenny could need in an emergency - Ollie promises no more emergencies like the one after the party! Jenny's sister Vicky whose Bongo barbeque said farewell in perfect Portwain style - and it is nice to know that she will miss Jenny so much :) To Mark 'Rave-on' Hodgson for his 4 hour Carl Cox like set, which will surely live in the annuls of history. To Mazza whose help, suggestions and money helped make the day do so good, although we are sure he didn't arrange the weather. To Matty Dreads who kept the YHA ship shape and also served up the hog roast when Ollie was too busy stressing about whether Dino's tyres were clean enough. To Nick and Vick who quietly in the background ensured veggies didn't starve - peace was on earth. Finally thanks to everyone who came down, and those who sent their best wishes, we love you all, and can't wait to see you all again.

Leaving (13th April 2009) - Day 1

(Food -> Aga toast, Pasties, M&S junk food)
(Money -> £90.51)

So, the time came when no one would let us stay behind any longer, so our only option was to leave. Thanks to lots of hard work by a million friends and family, with 90 minutes to go before our arranged meet up in Land's End, we were sat calmly having a cup of tea and a chat with Becky. This, of course, could not last, and as we were putting the last boxes into Dino Ollie off handedly asked Jenny where the passports with the visas were. These babies are the resultant of our previous four months hard worked, and had probably cost us over £500 each, if not more. We had last seen them when Russ had handed them over to us, having done us a favour and picked them up from the Iranian embassy, and bought them down to Cornwall on his bike. We had already had one very panicky day when we thought these were lost, and knew perfectly well that without these the trip was in jeopardy, certainly it would mean either a major delay or a crazy re-route. Needless to say a very fraught search followed, including ringing the youth hostel, driving over to Ollie's mum, and lots contorted expressions from Ollie. Luckily they were found within an hour, hidden in the 'safe place' of our laptop bag. Unbelievably we arrived at Land's End bang on midday, packed, ready and with just a little more adrenalin flowing round our bodies than planned. (note - a safe place has now been found for these passports).

We had planned to keep our departure low key, having said goodbye to most of our friends several times already. and so had only invited family along for the tearful goodbyes. Ollie's mum and Jenny's parents helped ensure that we were both very emotional on driving away, although Ollie expressed this emotion by eating a giant pasty!

 

We had driven only as far as Penzance when Mark, a fellow overlander, drove past photographing us as we left Ollie's well marked territory, so hopefully we will soon be putting up an action shot! The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, only punctuated with bewildered glances, as we confirmed that we were really doing it! We did hit some bad traffic leaving Cornwall, but we arrived in plenty of time for our ferry, happy in the knowledge that day one had passed without major incident. Upon boarding the ferry Dino was given a cursory search, but it seemed that the customs official was happy when she saw the last thing we had packed was a bottle of GlenFiddich! To finish our day we shared a half bottle of wine before finally falling into a welcome slumber on the ferry. Day 1 - job done.

The Road to Rouen (14th April 2009) - Day 2

(Food -> Pain au Raisan, cheese baguettes, Jenny's vege pasta (with a little added saucison))
(Money ->140 euros )

We woke up full of hope and expectation, ready for whatever adventure was put in front of our new persona - "intrepid explorers". Well, so we thought! As we were walking from the stairwell to the car deck, Ollie was about to shout 'Dino!' when he missed the step and fell with a loud thud, twisting his ankle in the process. Anyone who knows Ollie will know about his rather weak joints, and will understand the fear that both of us had at this point. But luckily Ollie could still walk, but certainly his first drive on foreign soil for the trip would have to be postponed. Damn ... only after a few hours would we be able to judge exactly how bad the ankle was.

So, it was Jenny who drove the first few tentative miles abroad, with Ollie stroking his ankle and cursing under his breath. But there was a great feeling of adventure still in the cab, especially as we had already decided not to stress when leaving Le Havre, and to drive to wherever was easiest on exiting the ferry port. What did it matter what direction we drove in? The direction we initially chose was the road to Rouen.

The only other point to note was within about half a mile we were followed by a lorry driver flashing his lights and echoing his horn continually, even whilst over taking us. We were not sure whether he saw something wrong with Dino's set up, or was somehow wishing us luck, but when we stopped to check we couldn't find anything wrong, and there has not been so much as flash of lights since.

On reaching the outskirts of Le Havre we turned on our faithful GPS unit, and decided to initially head for Frankfurt, as this looked to be directly on our path to Wroclaw in Poland. Our next surprise was to find we would be heading north initially, and then through Belgium! Well we certainly hadn't planned on this, and this upset Ollie's plan to have a sticker from each country going around Dino's middle. Anyone at home have a spare Belgium flag car sticker? We have left a gap .....

After a full days driving we decided to chance our arm and turn up to a camp site listed in our GPS POIs, and luckily for us it was open and happy to put us up for the night. I would guess that we were the only campers there, although it was sprawling (in the nicest possible sense) caravan park, but unlike all the UK caravan parks we have seen, seemed to have some real love applied to the design, and each caravan had a different design. The only bad news was the showers weren't working, which would mean two days without a proper shower. Jenny moaned and Ollie smiled :)

Our final task on day 2 was to put our tent up and get ready for bed, but unfortunately the day had another unpleasant surprise for us - the rooftent zip broke apart when undoing it. This could be a real problem for us when we hit monsoon like weather, but for now we have used a couple of bits of wire to close it up. This problem will have to be followed up though, watch this space. Day 2 turned out to be our road to Rouen.

Wild Camping (15th April 2009) - Day 3

(Food ->Honey Crepes , cheese crepes, Ollies's vege curry)
(Money ->64 euros )

Day three brought much better news, starting off with the fact that we had finally rented out our house in Southampton for a six month contract, starting on Saturday. Although the previous days issues where a bit of a downer, it was not actually something that got in the way of our 'no job, trip of a lifetime' happiness, but of course it was still a relief to get this news.

By this time we had found out that Ollie could drive with no problems, and so we continued our drive through central Europe, hitting Germany fairly quickly. We spent another 4 or five hours on the road, getting a fair way through Germany, reaching our chosen campsite about 7pm, only to find all the offices were closed. We had a look around and thought about our first wild camp, but as we were discussing this, a friendly jogger (Peter) arrived who asked us in German if he could help. Although he professed to speak no English, he was soon giving us the low down on the campsite. It was 'shiezer', because there was never anyone there to help, and so he would happily let us use his key to enter the gated grounds, and could also convince a cleaner to get us a shower token or two. Then in the morning we could leave and 'pay if we wanted'. Our first wild camp!

We quickly took up his offer and headed up to the the camping field, where we were the only ones present, and hence took the prime position next to the running water. We then spent the day and the next morning doing chores such as filling the cooker with petrol the first time, creating our solar shower, and doing our first load of land rover washing - putting all our clothes into a 70l dry bag, half filling with water, adding eco-friendly washing balls and finally attaching to the top of Dino so the sun could heat and Dino's bounces could shake for a full day. The result passed the Jenny smell test! By the time we left our clothes were being washed and we had showered - result!

Escape to Colditz (16th April 2009) - Day 4

(Food ->Poached egg in pitta bread , cheese ciabatta, Jenny's slow cooked (!!) lentil chili)
(Money ->69 euros )

The next day was more of the same, lots of motorway driving, trying to get plenty of miles behind us, getting to better value for money countries. Driving through Germany was a shock, as it really is a beautiful country, although lots more industry was present too. In fact at one point we had a view of some beautiful countryside, with windmills on one side and a dirty power station on the other. Certainly, to us this was the perfect answer to some people who critisize windfarms as an eyesore.

We soon worked out that we wouldn't reach Poland, our first destination, until the next day, so started looking for a campsite earlier in the day. We soon realized that the perfect place for us to stop would be Colditz! Neither of us could remember why Colditz was famous, except the castle and maybe an escape, but it was reason enough for us to head there. We arrived in the town, but could not find the campsite anyway, even with GPS assistance, so Jenny popped her head into a gym, where she luckily bumped into a member who was just leaving to cycle to the campsite on his bicycle. So we followed him through pine forests for a mile or so, until he took us to the camp site reception. It seemed that the gods were once again on our side - the sheep sacrifice had obviously done its job.

Upon arrival we were soon circled by two young German boys, aged about ten, who were eager to test their limited English on us and show us (Jenny too) pictures of semi naked women on their mobiles. We spent most of the night being carefully watched by this pair, and this continued the next day. We managed a form of communication with them, and by the time we left they had drawn us two pictures of Dino and one of a British fighter jet!

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