Dawn over the Black Sea

Well I have to start this blog off by saying how very saddened I was by the tone and content of Andy P’s blog yesterday, especially after the supportive and nurturing way I have written about him in my own efforts. It just goes to show that some people simply don’t appreciate the support, love, and encouragement you give, and instead turn and bite the hand that feeds them. Not being of a vindictive nature I have decided to turn the other cheek and to continue to write about Andy P in the same positive manner as before.

The party on Friday night was a great catch up with many of the ralliers we had met at previous bashes and also the opportunity to make friends with a lot more. Tents were pitched on the beach overlooking the Black Sea and some people (I wasn’t one of them) partied into the night and out the other. Andy and I were in our beds by about 1.00 am lulled to sleep by the monotony of the dance music beat which really wasn’t to our taste. In fact Andy P had at one stage in the evening approached he DJ and, quite courteously I thought, asked if he could play some Val Doonican because he thought that would really get the party ‘rocking’ – no pun intended. I can’t repeat what the DJ said in case any kids are reading this but it ended with the word ‘Grandad’ and implied in no uncertain terms that Andy was to ‘go away’.

I got up at 6 in the morning because I was bursting for a wee and saw the sun rise over the Black Sea. It was absolutely fantastic and the sunrise was also very spectacular. Very quickly the temperature rose and so we packed up our tents and were on our way by about 9.00 am and stopped off at a Carrefour to buy some food for lunch. We each chose a range of salads from the deli but I got the impression that Andy wasn’t entirely impressed with my choice of sauerkraut and a rather nice sliced cucumber one in vinegar and herbs. My suspicions were confirmed when Andy later threw the latter on the floor in the town square where we stopped for lunch, claiming it to be an accident.

From Constanta to the Bulgarian border only took an hour or so and the Border crossing was very quick. We had decided by then that we were going to crack on to the Turkish border so that we had that behind us too which meant that managing cash in different currencies becomes quite a challenge because you don’t want to end with spare cash when you leave a country because it’s difficult to change. One way of using up any spare cash is to use it to fill up with petrol. This can take some while to organise however whilst Andy goes through his pockets (and mine) to collect up every last cent, groat and farthing to ensure that nothing is wasted.

What makes it even more challenging for me is that whilst Andy P is normally generous by nature he is a complete tight arse when it comes to changing money in case he doesn’t get the very best exchange rate currently quoted on the international money markets, even when changing vast sums such as £20. Andy’s stock response to my request to change some money is to bark ‘we can pay by card’ and drive on, whereas I always prefer to have a little cash in the host country’s currency in case of emergency such as the purchase of a cold beer. This conflict came to a head at the Turkish crossing when I suggested we get some Turkish Lira at a little money changer on the Bulgarian side so that we had some cash to pay for emergencies …. like the purchase of a cold beer. ‘

‘It’ll take too long, we’ll change some on the other side,’ he barked at me.

It took me a few seconds to work out that Andy’s response implied that time in Bulgaria passes more quickly than time in Turkey, something that I think both Einstein and Professor Stephen Hawking were/are unaware of. Still, Andy does have an ‘A’ level in physics so perhaps he knows something that they don’t.

‘But what if there isn’t a money changer on the other side?’ I persisted, because I too can dig my heels in a little if necessary.

Andy P looked at me with a pitiful stare. ‘But there’s always been a money changer on both sides.’

‘But if there isn’t one on the other side we ….’, I trailed off when I saw the steam beginning to come out of Andy’s ears and, despite my deafness, I heard the huffing and puffing.

Turkish passport control was very smooth and the problems only started when Andy took the docs to the next window, (there were lots of windows to be visited). I saw his shoulders drop visibly and he had the look of a broken man.

‘So what can we do I heard him say?’ an undisguised note of panic in his voice. Turns out we had to buy some special Turkish car insurance before we could enter and coincidentally there was a little hut across the way where we could buy it. It was either 95 Euro or 100 dollars US. Andy made his way over to the hut. A few seconds later he called over to see if I had any Euros on me. Rather surprisingly to him, and it has to be said, to my glee, he couldn’t pay by card! Even more special from my perspective was that it needed only a cursory glance to confirm there was indeed no money changer to be seen on the Turkish side. I guess in a way Andy’s physics hadn’t let him down as it was indeed quicker! Like a true friend I resisted the temptation to gloat, knowing that I had the luxury of this blog where I could gloat to me heart’s content to the rest of the world.

So we entered Turkey with no money and in the darkness of a strange and seemingly unwelcoming town we searched the alleyways and backstreets for a bank so that we could take some money out and… buy a cold beer. Andy must have been feeling slightly chastened at this point because he agreed to change the princely sum of £25 saying that ‘any cash left over we can put into the petrol tank.’ I helpfully told him that this was likely to block the fuel filter but it may have been a little too late at night for him to fully appreciate the humour in this. Refreshed with a beer inside us we eventually ended up in a little hotel for the night for £15 each where we dined in our room on cabanos, cucumber, tomatoes, olives and a can each of cold (luke warm actually) Heinz baked beans eaten straight from the can. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Bloody luxury

An exciting day yesterday topped off last night by a small plate of chips, three bottles of cold Romanian beers and a headache this morning. I think it must be the heat! Staying at a friendly little guest house type place that Andy P booked on the internet the previous day but, as you do, forgot to write down the address, phone number, location, map co-ordinates, GPS location, name of the owner ……… well, just about anything that would have been of use to us in finding it. All we knew was that it was on the roadside, south of a town whose name I can’t pronounce, and cost 8 euro each per night. Not a lot to go on when asking a stranger with whom you have no more than three words in common if they know where the place is that you’re meant to be staying that night!

In the end Andy did the classic ET thing and ‘phoned home’ (to various members of his family before finding one willing to help – just kidding Parker lads – it’s a joke to try and make this a wee bit entertaining), to get them to access his emails and give us the address. Miraculously it worked and we arrived in darkness after first having rung the bell on some random gated mansion along the road with electronically operated gates and an owner that appeared out of the darkness. Me, being easily frightened by the dark and this being Transylvania,  pushed Andy P forward to speak to them whilst I locked the car doors and prepared for a quick take off should the person appear to be going to whisper something in Andy’s ear. Once bitten, twice shy springs to mind.

Anyway, it all ended well and four hundred yards further on we were given a warm welcome by a very genial Romanian proprietor with an excellent sense of humour, (he laughed at our jokes – or at least pretended to), when we finally reached our stop for the night. So no harm done and Andy and I have started speaking to each other again this morning in sentences of more than one word.

Lots of German cars on the road today, we presumed heading for Black Sea resorts because there were numerous beach towels flying from their windows as they streaked past. My 5 year old son Andy started waving to cars as they overtook to see if the occupants would wave back which was funny for the first five minutes but started to grate after an hour particularly as he kept up a running commentary that went something like ‘they waved; they waved; they didn’t; they waved; etc.’ It only stopped when he finally fell asleep so I wondered if it might just be his version of ‘counting sheep’.

Fantastic fields of sunflowers along the road as well, hundreds of acres of them. It made for a beautiful sight but I think Van Gogh would have had his work cut out capturing it because from memory, all he could ever manage was a vase full.

Communicating in the car with each other above the wind and road noise presents a few challenges and I have had to ask Andy to repeat things several times which has clearly irritated him somewhat. To the point that when I said we needed to call at a town to get some money out, he snapped back that we needed to call into town for me to get ‘a bloody hearing aid’. I didn’t quite catch what he said the first time but after asking him to repeat it, (I think three times in all), I realised that he was just being unkind and was probably a wee bit tense.

The highlight of the day was driving the Transfagarasan Highway, made famous by Top Gear in the days when it was worth watching. This climbs through a series of hairpin bends to nearly 7000 ft high and is a real experience. Bluebell 2 managed it no problem though she has developed an intermittent rattle that may need to be investigated at some stage, possibly sooner rather than later. And then, as we came down from the mountain, the event that I know all you ladies out there have been waiting for, the picture of Andy P in the buff at the same spot as the one his son took on the Mongol rally some six years ago, with the sweetener that a friend offered to donate £100 if Andy did it. As Andy stripped off the skies darkened over Transylvania as the sun disappeared from view but yes ladies, we have the evidence.

Cheers, Andy

James Parker

This is what you have got to look forward to James!!

Well, 24 hrs on and we are just waking up in a lovely little campsite in Salzburg, Austria. Arrived in Salzburg about 6 last night after a long drive from the Heidleburg gathering/party which for some, (not us old gits), went on till 4 in the morning. There was a huge gathering of ralliers at the site and in the morning the ‘thistle’ field that we were given to camp in looked like the tents at a music festival but without the mud and considerably more thistles. A few of the revellers were strewn around the site outside their tents or simply on the floor of the car park surrounded by empty bottles.

Surprisingly we were packed up and on the road by about 8.30 am on the way to Prague and then suddenly decided to go to Salzburg instead. That’s the beauty of doing this, so long as you’re heading in the general direction of East you can go where you like without giving anybody notice. Which is fine to a point, but unfortunately later in the day we decided to head west instead of south and went for about half an hour in the wrong direction. Andy P blamed me for the error because I was navigating but I countered with the defence that if the navigator is clearly asleep at the time (which I was), then it is the driver’s responsibility for the direction in which he has pointed the car. When the navigator awoke and checked the position of the sun against the time of day and did some quick mathematical calculations in his head it was as clear to him (as it should have been to the driver) that we were heading in the wrong bloody direction. A quick U-turn and after a scenic diversion of about an hour we were soon back on the right road.

We’d had a bit of a scare the previous day shortly after leaving Lille when Andy P announced that he couldn’t find his set of car keys. Like any good husband I reassured him that they MUST be in the car somewhere but after considerable searching and a not inconsiderable amount of swearing from Andy they were nowhere to be found. I was VERY tempted to tell him what an idiot he was at this point but since this was only the second day thought I should be more supportive and so made some appropriate comments about ‘how it could happen to anyone’ etc whilst secretly thinking what a bloody twat he was and that I wasn’t going to let the remaining set anywhere near him. I was quite grateful that I took this approach because as we got back into the car with heavy hearts I reached into my pocket and found Andy P’s car keys which I then remembered I had taken out of the ignition when I had taken over the driving. I thought of exclaiming ‘there they are’ and reaching down under the seat but decided that owning up was the best policy, much to Andy’s delight, and he tucked that one away to be brought out some time in the future.

We had gone on-line earlier in the day at a café where we’d stopped for lunch and tried to book into a hostel in Saltburg for the night but it was full so decided to try and find somewhere once we got there. So in the centre of Salzburg Andy asked a young guy, Martin, who spoke perfect English, where we could get access to wifi and he took us back to his apartment and checked out all the hostels for us on his computer (they were all full – nothing like forward planning eh?), and then phoned a camp site to check there was space there. He then walked down the street with us and pointed us on the road we needed to take to reach the campsite. What a great example of helping out complete strangers, an example of hospitality for all of us to think about.

That was ‘Thought for the day’, by Andy Coe!!!

Going to pack up now and spend a couple of hours in Salzburg before heading off to Budapest or Vienna or just down a wee country road if that’s what we want to do.

Cheers for now,

Andy C

Just woken up to a beautiful day in Cornwall and thinking hard about the last minute things we need to do. Like get the other Andy to just make a START on packing. I thought I was disorganised but last night Andy P was desperately trying on his son’s old trainers because ‘I haven’t got any shoes to wear’! I sympathise Andy, it’s only been a little over a year that we’ve know we were going to this. And shoes can be hard to come by.

Had the sump guard fitted yesterday which should protect — the sump, funnily enough. The slight problem is that the vibration noise from this piece of ‘Battleship grade’ sheet metal makes Bluebell 2 sound a little bit like a Spitfire in full climb mode. We are going to try and install some rubber spacers this morning to get rid of that. After Andy P has done his shoe shopping of course.

As you can see we now have a blog and by coming to this page you can read what we’ve been up to (internet access permitting). And if you want to see where we are and follow our route  you can click on our tracker which, providing it has a clear view of the sky, will keep you updated on our progress. Fingers crossed.

I’m back through to stay with my mum near Oxford today and Andy P will join me tomorrow. Then on Saturday we head to Goodwood to register and enjoy the leaving party before heading off on Sunday morning.  Our ferry to Calais is booked for Sunday afternoon and I’ve secured beds in a smart looking hostel hostel in Lile for Sunday night. After that it’s party time in Heidleberg on Monday night, Budapest on Wednesday night and then a big Friday night party on the Black Sea in Romania. Assuming Bluebell 2 gets us there of course. Hopefully then, an exciting week ahead. We’ll do our best to keep you posted,

Cheers, Andy C