Dumball Rally

Hello! Dumball 2 - The Road to Istanbul is about to start, and there is a new blog.

Check it out here.

See y'all in Istanbul...

Luke - now a proud member of Dumball One.

Oatcakes and olive tapenade, more greek tat than you can shake a stick at, kruder and dorfmeister sessions on the airport PA, one final beer and a 10 euro magazine.  What a strangely luxurious and surreal end to the dumball. 

This was gonna be a text to the missus, but I thought I'd share it with you all.  I'll update and add more to the blog when I get to a PC but for now this is me, the final Dumballer on mainland europe, signing off.

Lukas

Get in. Just sold Johnny4 to a blind man for 220 euros. Full story when i get to a full sized keyboard.

Blimey.

Jason and Me (rebs) are home, Luke as you can see still getting shot of the car.

We got there, it was wonderful, I wouldn't have changed a minute of it.

HURRAH!!

You see here... A victorious Team America at the Acroplis and team snowball (the lada chaps) with their 'Spirit of the Dumball' award. Team America won an award for being stopped bythe police the most... which was only 2 but had led to us being the most diligent with speed limits so it was memorable!











Next year... Africa!!

Tired, out of petrol and ready to go home. Big night last night, hiked up to the Acropolis this morning, waved farewell to the other 2/3 of Team America and spent the afternoon trying to get rid of Johnny4.

No joy, yet. Team Essex won't give up, me and Boss Hog called it a day and headed to the beach. Numerous people we have spoken to have said its not possible- the second hand cars are worth more here, but it would €2000 to change the registration, the steering wheel is on the wrong side, and, our biggest problem, its Sunday, so no garages are open.

Stick to the original plan I think- we'll give the car to my Greek friends brother. He has a friend who wants to drive it back to England, avoiding the registration issues. If he does that, it will push Johnny's clock over 230,000 and he's still going a stormer. What a car.

Plan is to meet David (Vanessa's bro- cheers for all your help!) when he finishes work tomorrow, he will guide me out this crazy city, we leave leave the car at his place in the suburbs and then he'll give me a lift to the airport. It wouldn't have been right to finish the Dumball on a train anyway.

And that will be it. A sombre mood in the camp today. Ghostrider are the only team to go on to Zante, my guys have gone, Snowman couldn't get out the city due to, of all things a road rally blocking the roads...

Keep it Dumball troupers. Lukas x

Back on the road again... After 18 hours in Platamonas we're all well relaxed. Compared to the last few days it been a bit uneventful (no complains here!) and we've all loved a bit of sun, sea, seafood and beautiful views- we could see Mount Olympus from our room, but hazy mountains don't come out that well on a camera phone.

The only problems are that it's nearly over and we all have blisters on our feet from volleyball on the scorching sand- Greece is hot. Our hostel man said we may be able to sell our cars for €1000. If we manage that, this really will be the best week ever.

We found the beach...

Oops got the last post a bit wrong... It, and this, should show a blinking impressive set of peaks on the road into greece from sofia. Wow. I think called Maljovica. Makes up for the lack of road signs... Got into sofia with difficulty last night, torrential rain and cyrrillic street names and one way systems conspired against us but team america won through. We hear it's raining in greece for the first time in ages- please no! Not greece as well!

This road is beautiful. I'm off. One more border to go and the lada is still going!
Rebs

What you should see here in the background is

Only the mentalist, dustiest, bumpiest series of half finished tunnels in eastern Serbia.

That really was mental, the photos don't do it justice. This is on the main road from Belgrade to Sofia, a so called motorway. They appeared to be letting traffic go for an hour each way, through about 2km of 14 tunnels, some of which were no more than holes freshly blown through the rock. So dusty and dark you could barely see the car in front. Jesus.

Now, with 40kph speed limits on the main A roads, we really can't leave this country quick enough. Not that we would if we had more time. Serbia has been a proper adventure and the people lovely.

I think i see the border in the distance. Now, where are those passports?...

We'd better pull into this field to let them past. I wonder what's causing all this?

We seem to have hit some traffic... Lets go round it, the queue's only a couple of km long...

Ahh. We're obviously the best team.

Notice the different alphabet. Makes it quite tricky to read road signs when you have directions in Roman.

Touch my pen.

Back on the road. I'm just gonna post a few pictures, I think Rebs said it all when she had some internet access this morning.

Leaving Beograd was thankfully a hell of a lot easier. And... Great. Its started raining.

Well.  Have a bit of time in the hostel before any of the 17 boys stir...   and it's  better than  texting messages which is really time consuming. Oh my.  Yesterday started wonderfully, all cars present and correct, with brilliant sunshine in Budapest.  The drive wasn't going to be so long so it was really good to have a good look at a city, and Budapest is beautiful.  Unfortunately it also has alot of road works and we made some wrong decisions getting out, which had 2 consequences - we got caught in a massive traffic jam and... the lada overheated.  That took some time, and some blue language.  The serbian border, while not easy, didn't take too long and was pretty much as we'd expected, but what we hadn't reckoned for was the loony speed limits on Serb roads, the fact their motorways are single carriageway A roads, and the PROLIFERATION of Serb traffic police.

I had been in their beautiful country (and it is) no longer than an hour before I was stopped for exceeding the speed limit of 60 on a completely clear road.  I had also crossed the middle no overtaking line.  2 offences... 6000 dinar.  About 60 quid I think, but really I have no idea of currency anymore! But we didn't have any dinar.  And they wouldn't take euros.  So we stood at the side of the road contemplating what we could do.  ANd they looked at us, and we looked at them, and they must have taken pity on us and let us off both the fine and, the 90km round trip to get the fine to them. Hurrah!!  With wobbly legs we carried on.  And it dawned on me that as I was the one who'd signed the short term insurance slip at the border, it was now me driving through serbia.  So everyone who'd been driving at the border was stuck driving on these mental roads til Bulgaria.  Hmmm.  All the other cars were behind us so we were able to warn them not to drive over 60 even if there is no car anywhere in sight.  There'll be a radar with a man on the end of it...  And they didn't have a girl with them to smile 'sweetly'.

One grooovee thing though is that (and we worked this out a little late) oncoming cars flash you to let you know, which is very sweet.   And everyone we have met, here at the hostel and in the bar and restaurant last night, have been terribly friendly.  One guy, milos, in the bar, had a huge rant about the police and said "don't even look at them.  just hold out your money and say don't speak to me.  they are all bastards I hate them"  (or words to that effect... I was tired).

On reflection I don't think that's the best technique for us to use. And we didn't ue that tecnique the second time we got stopped.  For jumping a red light... which was amber.  Two cars, we managed to get out of it witht the amber argument and the others had to pay.  By this time it was about 9pm, dark, we had been pottering through towns and villages at 40k for hours and we had thoroughly had enough of Serb roads.  Which is not the right frame of mind to enter a big city with!  Driving around Belgrade, lost, with a lada that can't stop cos it thinks that it would be it's last and final stop, for an hour, wasn't pretty.

But, the thing that had made us the most late, which was stopping in the town of Novi Sad, most certainly WAS pretty and well worth a look.  Gorgeous river.  RIck tried to take us to see one of the bridges that had been bombed during NATO's regular visits a few years ago, but they've only gone and fixed it!  How dare they move forward to a brighter future! Pretty white suspension bridge now. There was a railway bridge which which used to be next to a road bridge - you could still see where is used to be on the banks and the piers in the river. Now, the cars take turns going across it single file, and if there is a train everyone has to wait for that. Tis mental. Sofia is this evening.  That's our city - we were all in charge of booking hostels and getting us in to town, and it's Johnnyfour's turn tonight.  It CAN"T be any worse than belgrade... x

Heavens to betsy.  Just got to Hostel in belgrade.  Which is a CITY.  A BIG CITY.  Lada can barely manage in traffic and ended up parking outside the greek embassy while we asked sexy ladies for directions.  Massively lost, massively tired, everyone overheated, electrics are buggered in the merc, border was sinister and muchos insurance was needed, I have been stopped by police twice but evaded a fine both times, (thank god for my lady bumps), team ghost rider (bmw, rick's team) not so lucky and got a fine.  I am going to get beer and food now.

night

Rebs

Here you can see our leader Rick, sporting a find hat made of mushrooms and a Hungarian donkey on a spring. Its finally stopped raining, so we actually got to see a bit of Budapest. At the top of a hill there is a look out point where we could buy assorted tourist tat and hot dogs with our winnings from the casino last night.

Down in town we saw a statue of a physical manifestation of anonymous. Big man in hooded cloak like Death, very creepy may post a pic later.

Will speed up, am getting fucking bored of typing on this phone and am trying to see Serbia!

Lada overheated and we thought we'd lost it. We can afford to lose another car but any more and we're screwed. Had fun trying to bump it earlier (which we have to do every time it stalls. Most fun in busy cities. Johnny4 can actually push him along if we're behind. Ghostrider - the beemer - tried earlier but the bumper didn't fit and they just succeeded in crushing the boot) for about half an hour before team snowman remembered they'd disconnected the battery. Why i oughta...

Serbia is nuts. We had to buy insurance at the border as expected. Jason is an experienced traveller and we got it a lot cheaper than the others. Play them off against other and lie to get the best deal. But it was grim, kids begging straight away, much more like a proper border than all this wave straight through EU nonsense.

Of course we'd been in the country less than an hour before we had a run in with the police... We were breaking the 80kph (under 50mph and on the bloody motorway to any mums reading...)

So much keeps happening and i just need to post this! More later...

We're in Hungary tonight. And Gerrard is doing us proud... And now Terry's in on the action!

...

Doh! They got one back. Boo hiss. Yah boo Hungary sucks. Nice forests though ;)

Czech border police just got a load of money off us cos we forgot to buy a toll sticker to put in our car. Poo bum! Apparently could have been alot more... And no searching of cars or any other such upheaval. Damn my memory! And after such copious research!
And thank god they didn't find that gun in the boot. Or the heroin up boon's bum.
X rebs

And still it rains.
Czech drivers are not the best, not a massive journey today but had some drama to put us back a bit. After a good night in prague in which girl went for dinner/bed option and boys went for meat/ lady dancing, we all woke to find the lada MISSING. Bearing in mind it needs a bump start and stalls often, theft seemed unlikely... Lovely lady at the apartment managed to work out it had been impoUnded, so after a few crowns were handed over we had him back. Not so lucky the honda, call sign thunder eagle, whose brakes gave up and had to be given away. To a rather grateful czech man as it turned out. No pictures, luke was covering base camp and i was sightseeing! And what of jason? I hear you holler. Well, yes, he did disappear, went to a disco, innocently snogged an off duty prostitute and came back. Onwards to budapest (dramas mean we miss bratislava). Wibble.

The flaming lada. In transit. In a rare respite from the rain... Heading to prague via liepzig. Long
Day.
Jason disappeared again but returned- will we ever wake up knowing he's joining us on the next leg? Who can say. Older than us all by a country mile and averaging three hours sleep... Next stop prague!

Well, I was in the driving seat today, the 'check' engine light went off and the autobahns were clear.  Johnny is most certainly forgiven for scaring us yesterday.  We were mostly at about 60 so the Lada could keep up but I did a dramatic accelerate halfway through the journey when we went ahead for a bit.   We were told it did look good from behind, the turbo disappearing into the distance!  hurrah.  I am now sounding like the norwegian guy we met in amsterdam who mistook us for car enthusiasts and ranted on about things we didn't understand... sorry!  but it does cruise so very well.  mmmmmm.   All cars healthy, walkies proving very useful.  

Love from Rebs

PS had some trouble with formating the entries on the net, didn't mean to make it look like I was calling my mum and dad little shits!!  That was aimed at the little tornado of a hackney crimewave and we apologise for any offence or inconvenience caused.

The're not quite as liberal in Germany as they are in the netherlands so just before the border we put everything we had in Boon:



He's the one in the back, tucked up in his sleeping bag, with a big grin on his face. Funnily enough...

...and due to a clerical error Johnny5 is rebranded as Johnny4.

Amsterdam was, as you may expect, a fitting start. Some dumballers went to see some banana sex, at 4am some gave money to a man on a bridge who promptly ran away, and jason did actually return.

Our engine light has gone off, and the turbo is working again. But as the runt of the litter, the lada is setting the pace at a steady 66mph, and generally needs a bump start cos its solinoid has gone.

Onwards...

In a tent and its time for bed.

Just about to leave the country and this light comes on... Oh well, that's what you get with a £200 turbo. See you on the continent!

The little shits are the ones who did this to Jason's car, after he drove down from Wales to join us on the dumball and left it in Nightingale Road for ONE HOUR. And got the stereo. AAARGGHH! Are we being targeted????

The stars are the parents who put us up at a moment's notice at about 1am when Jason decided he didn't want to leave his car open for a week in Hackney! So the dumball made a short stopover in Staines, in an impromtu stylee. Thank you staines, hello dover...

This is Johnny5:



He's a bad ass mo'fo and no mistake. 2 whole litres of turbocharged 16 valve testosterone. He'll be our ride through this little adventure we like to call The Dumball, and he's gonna do us damn proud. But before Johnny5 there was Nobby. But Nobby got nicked. Nuts.

But guess what? Nobby got found again!! But... being only a little banger of an Escort, once the little shits had bust the locks, barrelled the ignition and generally just sullied his roadwothyness and pride, he wasn't much use to us or anyone else and we had to give him away.

Here are his final moments...



R.I.P., Nobby. Welcome to The Dumball, Johnny5.

The king is dead. LONG LIVE THE KING!

Woo! Image inserted. Get In.

Brill! A way has been found to ensure updates direct from mobile to blog.

What marvellous times.

let's see if I can upload a pic...