Trailer

I thought it time to show what I've been working on. I've been slowly putting together many many hours of footage into somewhat of a documentary. More details coming soon...

Feel free to watch in HD on YouTube.

Welcome home!

Phew, we're finally home. Cassie's parents greeted us at the gate with much fanfare! When we got home we were treated to a house all geared up with power and hot water all on, oh and numerous treats, oh and fresh milk in a cold fridge.

Everything is perfectly familiar, but different. But I'm sure we're the ones who have changed. Much more to say, but we're just about to have a quick nap, but this was just a 'we're home safely' post.

Not the last post, but pretty close to it…

In London still, we’ll be leaving tomorrow at 10PM local time.

Perhaps the primary purpose of this post is to say thanks. Thanks so much for coming along for the ride. Christopher McCandless summed it up best: “Happiness is only real when shared”. You all gave us a reason to keep going, if at least to share a tiny bit of the world with you. Your kind words lifted us up when we were low. There were times when it was difficult to film, but we may not have captured it if it wasn’t for you.

Another thing I’m so thankful for is that we didn’t have any accidents. I’ll try explain. Say you live in a country town, and you go to a big city… daunting enough. You’re probably three times more likely to have an accident. You don’t know the lanes or where you’re going, the traffic is much faster, the pedestrians dart across the road. Combine that with been on the other side of the road, MAD drivers, with laws you don’t know about… for 90+ days. There was the ever-present threat of an incident.
Making it worse is the fact we’ve had no comprehensive insurance since we’ve left home. In Russia, Mongolia & Ukraine we had Compulsory Third Party insurance, but no where else as far as we’ve known. At all times we were very careful and perhaps it paid off.

So, anyway, I’m glad that risk is over with. Sure we could have an accident at home, but you can bet it’s less likely, we’d be insured and we speak the language.

Responses to comments:
Don’t be sad people at a blog ending. Eventually I hope to compose all our video into an interesting story, something you might watch even if it didn’t have us in it. Done with music and decent narration, it could be interesting.
Kerry – thanks for all that. We did go to the museum and see the Rosetta stone copy. Part of me thought that you had touched it before us. Kind of a through-time connection.

Checking my email a few minutes ago, a reminder came up ’GT – Leave, 14 weeks overdue.’
Wow. 14 weeks ago I was at work! 14 weeks is NOT a very long time, yet the things we’ve seen blow our minds. I think you guys appreciate what we’ve done more than we do. As I scroll through a few months of photos and videos, I see an immense distance. Every day different. Every day with its own challenges. I had zero appreciation of the scale of this adventure. We would not have seen a single precent of the world, yet it is there for you to see. We’ve proved it’s possible, so the question I pose to you is: 

Where will YOUR next adventure in life take you?

Big or small, we want to hear them. And if you have excuses, make sure you check they are valid. The best way to check, is to see if anyone else in the world has had the same excuse and done it anyway. You can bet there’s been not one or two, but MILLLIONS of people with much greater hurdles to overcome than you. Put one foot in front of the other and the rest is history.

25,992kms

Cassie: 25,992kms. I’m still trying to absorb that number. ‘They’ say that most people will drive an average of about 20,000km during a year. We’ve driven over that in three months. We picked up the car in Vladivostok on 28 June 2012, set off driving on 29 June 2012 and finished up on 1 October 2012.

Troopie was farewelled today as we left him and Quorn at the freight forwarder’s depot. I had a bit of a lump in my throat as we were driving away. The guy at the freight forwarder’s office kindly offered to drive us to the train station in Southampton. We were all geared up to get a taxi but he insisted on driving us there. Again, such kindness from a stranger. It really restores my belief in humanity that people can be so freely generous.

The better part of this morning was spent physically getting the car ready for shipping. Graeme got everything off the roof rack and sorted it out so that we could get it in the back of the car, disconnected the auxiliary battery and other stuff like that. Whilst my jobs were to clear out and tidy up the interior, clean out the fridge, empty the water containers and pack a bag. As it turned out, we finished our respective jobs pretty much at the same time and after getting breakkie, putting a splash of fuel in the car and throwing out our mini mountain of rubbish we were ready to set off for the final 93km to the depot at Southampton. I didn’t like seeing those kilometres dwindle. I wanted the drive to be the same as it has been for the past three months – ending in us camping somewhere for the night and getting up in the morning to do it all over again.

Troopie looking a bit bare on top with everything packed away inside.

I’m sure Quorn will look after Troopie until we pick it up.

I’m so sad that the trip is almost over. In fact, it pretty much feels done and dusted already. A couple more days of sight-seeing around London, three connecting flights to get home and…..that’s it. We’ll be home. How strange does that sound!? I’m happy to be heading home because, I don’t want to speak for Graeme, but I am tired. I think we’ve said this before, but if we could snap our fingers and be home we could spend a week or so recuperating and then snap our fingers to be back overseas and continue the journey.

Our train journey from Southampton to London was great. The train was relatively comfy, super quiet, super smooth and quick….and expensive! Everything here is very expensive.

After getting off the train at the Waterloo station we had to find accommodation. Boy oh boy that was a bit tricky. Even using the websites we’ve used previously to get cheaper accommodation it was still crazy expensive. We finally found somewhere to stay in an amazing location. We are within spitting distance to the London Eye (literally at the side of our hotel!) and across the River Thames from Westminster (Parliament House) and Big Ben! Seriously cool. Tomorrow the plan is to jump on the London Eye for an overall city perspective and then take it from there.

Graeme: Yeah, Cassie said it all. We were perhaps a bit daft. We had no idea of the costs that London would bring. After our generous lift to the train station we bought tickets. $106AUD for both… Ouch! Train was good, very quiet. The drinks cart came around, figuring for that sort of money we’d get a free cup of tea. Nope, that’ll be $8.50. Jhezuz. We’d payed 70 cents for two cups in Russia! After that, we  found ourselves standing in the London-Waterloo station using Wi-Fi to find a hotel. Again, something we should have done beforehand, but we didn’t know the freight-forwarded would go so smoothly. After exhausting all the Google maps, Apple maps, Expedia, hotels.com, we fluked on Premier Inn. We’d stayed next to one a few nights ago, and they have dotted every highway we’ve been on. At a much more respectable $200 something a night. To put in perspective, some hotels were charging 10 GBP PER HOUR for Internet access, this place charges 3GBP per day. We had the money, but I couldn’t help but do the sums, calculating how long I’d have to work, and how long I’d have to save for each night.

Thinking it was all behind us, I jumped on to book our return flights this afternoon. We’d planned to fly out on the 3rd… at 4207 pounds… each! HOLY CRAP! Staring to freak out, looking around at heaps of other carriers… nope, same thing. Thinking ‘how could we have been so stupid’, all that sort of thing. The annoying thing was, return flights were advertised at (booked a fair way ahead) were like $1500AUD, so I felt a bit robbed at the prospect of paying ~$6500 … EACH. I guess there is a lesson there kids, BOOK AHEAD! If we’d hold out here for a few weeks, they’d be a lot cheaper, but at ~$200/night, you soon eat up any savings! We were stuck.

After much more sweating, like a desert island appeared in the distance. Amongst the next few days of 4200GBP flights, one single flight of a relatively respectable 1470GBP flight revealed itself. Without any hesitation, it was booked and we’re set to fly out on the 4th. Phew.

In some ways we should have booked our flights earlier, but there’s no way we could have known when we would get here. I only posted all this so other people who come after us will do some research about this end of the trip ;)

Photos

Here are some photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/ParisToSouthampton?authkey=Gv1sRgCOToweSt9NWQZA

Some more 360’s have been put up as well.

My UK Mum

Cassie: As predicted, today was a very special day. We finally met the beautiful Elsie, whom I've dubbed my "UK Mum" and her budgie, Freddie. It was so lovely to sit comfortably over a cuppa and have a chat with Elsie (and to a lesser extent, Freddie) in her home. But it made it very difficult to say goodbye. Neither of us wanted to say goodbye. Yes, there were loads of tears and I honestly was crying my eyes out after we rounded the corner and drove away. I was trying to be so brave and not blubber too much as we were saying goodbye. One beautiful thing Elsie said as we were leaving: she was giving me a hug, turned to Graeme and said through her tears, "Thanks for bringing her here". Thanks for being here, Els x. It has been a truly wonderful way to end our trip. Something I'll never forget.

Tonight we've stopped near a castle that Elsie recommended we see. It's called Tynemouth Castle perched high up on a cliff and it's really crumbly looking which is perfect! Just the way an old castle should be. We were too late to walk through it so we'll check it out tomorrow morning before heading off. There you go, Mum, we're going to see a castle :)

We emptied out our "pantry" and fridge of anything we don't think we'll use between now and when we farewell the car, and gave it to Elsie. It's nice to know all that stuff is going to be used. There was even an unopened bottle of juice and a packet of soup that came with us all the way from Russia. It was always a bit difficult to gauge how much food to buy at a supermarket when we needed to.

I don't really have anymore words for today. I just want to let it sit with me for a while longer.

Graeme: Breakfast at Ed's was hotcakes with would you beleive, pepper. Nice one! Not entirely savory, just a hint. Wow, the generosity is astounding. We always make all these promises with people, like if you're in Australia, you must visit us etc. Not only do we genuinely wish that, I also hope real hard that we would offer such generosity to future strangers that come our way.
I fell asleep at Elsie's which provided a good opportunity for the girls to chat without me there. It's also sad clearing out the car. The car is becoming an empty shell, devoid of the colour that made it our home. Tomorrow we should get 2/3 to Southampton, leaving some time on Monday to clean it up, drop it off and catch a train to London town. We've still not booked accommodation or return flights in case there are complications with the car. I'm torn between wanting this trip to not end, and getting all the lame shipping, accommodation and endless hours of discomfort in cattle class.

Photos: Elsie, Ed & Tynemouth Castle

Coventry

Cassie: Today has not panned out how we thought it would – in a nice way. Not that we really had a plan in the first instance. The only thing on our agenda today was to visit the Transport Museum in Coventry – tick. Then as we were leaving Coventry, Graeme thought it would be a good opportunity to get the air conditioning in the car degassed for shipping (a ridiculous requirement of Australian Customs). We were lucky enough to find a mechanic who would not only do this for us straight away, but in the process asked if we would like to stay in his home tonight which he shares with his partner and son, cook us a home cooked meal, enjoy a shower and give us somewhere comfy to sleep. What the!? That’s so lovely. And that’s almost where we find ourselves now. We are waiting for our gracious host to finish up work then we follow him home for the night. Such amazing hospitality from a stranger. His name is Ed, and he himself has travelled to 55 countries! Can’t wait to talk to him more about that over dinner. Graeme is resting against the window of the car. He’s like a child that is all tuckered out after a big day.

Below is a picture of Ed’s workshop and the machine degassing our air conditioning.

Tomorrow we are off to see a family friend in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Elsie, if you’re reading this, we’ll see you soon!!! It’s very special to be seeing Elsie because she’s known me since I was a little girl but we’ve actually never met in the 20 or so years Elsie and my mum have been close friends. It’s going to be a special day.

Graeme (Written a fair bit later):
Wow. Seeing the bikes today was indescribable… but I’ll try. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been more interested in the trip, the route, the sights, the trucks and the bikes, more than the people. Nothing personal, it’s that my dream didn’t have people in it. I still hold in high regard any anyone who has done something like this – so I guess in a way that’s a kind of respect. The show was for me a visual inspiration of what we the route looked like… I liked what I saw. Anyway, I digress. Seeing the bikes was like seeing proof! Proof that the route was dirty. Proof that it was rough. Proof that it happened.

I feel much more of a connection to the trip through the bikes than anything else. I had such respect for the bikes. I don’t know why. In the same way I have immense respect for our car. Tom said when planning this trip, that it would be a shame to do such a trip and leave the car behind. “Rubbish” I said, “There’s no way I’d be attached to an object”. Well, I was wrong. Although I’m not attached to it, I will always see it fondly. I can already imagine issuing it a respectful nod as I walk past it. Or when seeing it from a window. Knowing it was waiting for us in Siberia. Knowing it was our shelter when it rained. Knowing it started every morning. It’s earned its stripes in my eyes.

Back to the bikes, and kind of on that topic of proof. Seeing the welds in Russia, seeing the helmet comms. Seeing the 20117 miles on the clock. It all happened! It’s weird now that I look back on writing that.. of course it happened? I think that’s why I’ve been so desperate to retain the patina of our car. The dust, the water marks. The oil marks on the roof. It all screams authenticity that I can’t wait to share with the readers. The UK weather has washed most of it away, but for some sick reason, I’d kept cleaning one patch on the bonnet throughout the whole trip. It’s a brilliant white, which even now still sticks out against the relative beige surroundings.  I hope that others get the same out of seeing our dusty car as I did feeling the dust on the motorbikes. We can only hope that I’ve left enough dust, and cleaned off enough mud to satisfy customs. Pfst, lets face it, either way I’m going to get stung for ‘cleaning’, even if it was brand new – what crooks! I won’t have the luxury of putting mine in a museum, so you’ve got about a week to see it before I scrub it within an inch of it’s life.

One thing I haven't figured out with the bike; is I thought there was a dint or a scratch on the fuel tank when it was dropped on the rocks in Mongolia The tank was immaculate, with exception of the tank bag rubbing on top of it and a heap of stickers. Oh I could talk for hours but I must restrain myself.

The autograph I suspect was written to who won it at a charity auction.
We’ve just spent the most amazing evening with our host Ed. Ed. was the mechanic who de-gassed our air-conditioner who invited us for dinner. He spent hours preparing us traditional Indian food, followed up by Indian chai tea. Yum. The generosity astounds us. He set us up on their Wi-Fi too. He’s travelled through 55 countries, and instantly said you can’t sleep in your car. Stay with us. So we did. We’ve chatted for hours (it’s midnight now) about all manor of world politics, travel, finance, you name it. What an amazing man. We’re still touched by the hospitality of strangers.

Responses to comments:
Mum D: Plenty of research. Dead end after dead end. One photo, on a BBC Coventry website, about four years old suggested that Charlie’s bike was there (when the article was written). It was a long shot.
Chris B: Nope, didn’t shock me. In fact the section in the museum was so quiet, I could have thrown a leg over it. I totally should have.
Steven / Mum C: It does seem to have been quick. It’s amazing how much time there is in life to do the things you want.

Coventry Transport museum

I'm quickly posting this on cafe wifi because our access to Internet has unreliable. Yes. Yes. Oh yes. One of the bikes from long way round. Was it absurd that I had to touch it?
20,000miles on the clock. I'll post more once the giddiness has subsided.

Maartin

You can click on these pictures for larger ones. I’ve displayed them in this way as they roughly make up a wide view from the same location. More 360’s have been uploaded.

Today we visited Port Isaac in Cornwall and the port next to it. This is where scenes of ‘Doc Martin’ are shot. The motivation wasn’t so much the TV show, but more the coastline and surrounding farmland which is pictured. Well, I must say, the TV show matches it’s setting perfectly. Things are tweaked like, the school isn’t a school, it’s a hotel/cafe, but I suspect they take the signs down to make it congruent.

It’s stunning nonetheless. The weather in the few days we’ve been here has been predictably miserable. Windy as hell, drizzly, raining, freezing cold, salt spray and very occasionally a ray of sun shine.

Cassie: Camping is an extremely difficult thing to do in this country because seemingly all the land is privately owned. I thought Australia was bad for fences and gates, I’ve never seen so many fences and gates in my life as I’ve seen here! As you already know, we were moved on from our first camp in the UK by the traffic cops or whatever they were, last night’s camp seemed ok as it was a gravel carpark that backed onto some bushland. It probably took us well over an hour of driving around to find it so we couldn’t be too picky about where we ended up. We were woken up this morning by the sound of being surrounded by cars. Seems as though the locals use it as free all-day parking while they’re at work, so as you can imagine, we were worried about getting parked in so had to move on quickly. Tonight’s camp is in a truck stop carpark. The quality of camps has hit rock bottom. Normally at these rest stops you’ve got to pay for parking if you’re intending on staying for more than 2hrs which is a bit stingy I reckon, but this one appears to be free parking. The Brits don’t encourage drivers to stop and rest, that’s for sure!

There are caravan parks we could stay in but oh my, they’re so depressing here it just doesn’t seem right to have to pay for something that’s worse than staying in a truck stop carpark.

We had a great day today walking around the little village of Port Isaac. The coastline is beautiful – really rugged and green. We had lunch in a pub in the village. Graeme had sausages, mash and gravy and I had fish and chips with mushy peas. Very British and very good.

End of an era?

Leaving Paris, half way to Calais, we stopped at a truck stop for lunch. The wind was staggering. When I was getting back into the car, the wind caught the door and it flew as hard as you could throw it into the van next to us. The noise would have certainly roused attention, but it was no doubt lost in the wind. It cracked the side of their rear indicator. oops. I sat and thought for a while. The rest of the van was rough as guts, my bit of damage was completely undistinguished from the rest so we let sleeping dogs lie. We drove up to Calais and caught the euro-tunnel. It was cool if not a little underwhelming. We drove into a train and emerged some 30 odd minutes later a little bit darker and with 'Welcome to the UK' messages on our mobiles. I was concerned driving back on the left again after so long on the right. Traffic makes it much easier to get used to it. When there is none, and it's dark, it's a whole different ball game. We were fine.Stopped at a truck stop for so
me dinner and took off towards London. Staggeringly, our GPS said there was only 41KM to our destination, and seeing what had to have been London in the distance we decided to camp. Oh how we miss the ease of camping in countries previous. Tired from our evening channel crossing, we drove down a police-only off-ramp. The camp was slopey and noisy, not resulting in terrific sleep. This morning we were woken by highway patrol knocking on our window. They were nice enough, but it was so ironic how it was the last official night of the trip, having camped at least 80 nights previous without interruption.
We arrived at our destination, 25 Bulwer Street or, to people who are not oddly fixated on an 8 year old television program, the point where Long Way Round began. Having done the route in reverse, it seemed only sensible that this be our finish line. So much of our lives has been spent getting to this point. Cassie was rightfully emotional, but as for me, these things take a while to sink in. As if nothing had happened, we drove on towards Port Isaac(s). We pulled off the motorway and had lunch at an English pub. Steak and ale pie seemed to fit the bill. It came with mashed potatoes, peas, carrots and all that stuff we call comfort food.

The caravan park we planned to stop at tonight was a slopey, muddy and populated paddock - hard to charge money for I would imagine! We since have stopped down the road which is much better. There would be room for 10 cars, gravel underfoot etc. We may be over someone's back fence as some partyish conversation has developed close by. It should die down soon. Our normal tricks for finding camps are not working here. Every inch of land is private.

Thanks for all the comments on the photos and posts. It always makes good reading.

See you in the UK

haha all the comments were terrific. Ironically we had Syrian for dinner last night and couldn’t have been treated nicer. We’re on our way to Calais now to catch our 6-something PM euro-tunnel crossing. Hopefully our GPS is better behaved today.

We’ll probably not have internet tonight so we’ll hold off. It’s been on and off raining since last night. It’s made getting ready fun, but it’

More Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AroundParis2?authkey=Gv1sRgCLDe447CreWp-QE

If we don’t make it to the UK, it’ll be something to do with cricket scores. Our final border crossing I suspect?

Pictures from Bruges to Paris

Cassie: Here’s some more pictures…

https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AroundParisBrugge?authkey=Gv1sRgCLP5rIL518eAWw

One thing we forgot to mention in our last blog post was the fact that our GPS aka ‘Juliet’, bless her cotton socks, took us into the centre of Paris when in fact we were trying to find the caravan park we are staying at well on the outskirts of the city. The whole reason we booked the caravan park was to avoid the whole Paris traffic thing but alas, we literally made it to the centre and had to get our way out of it again. Thankfully Graeme was driving and did a wonderful job of manoeuvring the Troopie through the tight traffic and narrow streets, All up, we were in traffic for maybe 2hrs or more. We think what happened is that the GPS ignored our recently programmed address for the caravan park and instead had a hissy fit and picked up the fact that we had previously programmed in Paris itself. Not a very logical explanation but it’s the only one we can come up with. Yikes, oh well, we lived to tell the tale!

It’s 11.30am on our second day in France and we’re tied up at the caravan park doing our washing of all things. But, it’s wonderful that they have a washing machine and dryer that we’re able to use. It just means patience is required when sitting idly by waiting for clothes to wash and dry. It sure beats washing everything by hand. Our sight-seeing today will be cut short but nevertheless, on the list today is Notre Dame. We’ll also try our best to find a cafe that doesn’t take the table top away when we ask for a cup of coffee. Although, we were both in stitches about that yesterday. Probably not the most suitable decorum for a cafe but you try keeping a straight face when a surly guy takes the table top away from you. “You want a coffee!? Well then, I must take this table top away from you!”.

Tomorrow morning we will be on our way to Calais for the train ride to the UK! Super excited. Looking forward to being able to use our language and converse fluently with people again in an English speaking country. It also means our trip is coming to an end. The UK is the final country on our itinerary. Some days I feel like I could continue for another three months, but I equally feel tired enough to make me ready to go home.

Paris

Graeme:
We visited a heap of the Paris sights today. Typical Eiffel tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triumph, outside of the Louvre etc. Was good. Paris centre is fairly pretty. As you get out in the suburbs the graffiti and rubbish skyrocket. I suppose that's typical of most cities.

Auxiliary battery in the car has definitely failed. Last two nights, the low voltage alarm has gone off, leaving the fridge also unable to run. It's one of those 'maintenance free' batteries so I can't top it up, but the indicator window says everything is OK. I figure for it to have failed so suddenly it must have had a plate collapse or something. It does read a full charge, and will run everything flawlessly for a while, but it'll go from 90% to 10% instantly. Oh well. It's a bit annoying. We're driving the 1km to the train station to give the aux battery a chance to leech some charge from the good battery and absorb some charge from the alternator.

Having 'attended' French at school, I'm the one sent on all the shopping errands. I was sent in to get UHT milk, tea, and breakfast cereal. I came out with UHT milk, breakfast cereal, box of assorted lollies and bruschetta bread. Cassie went back in to get fresh food which I was not aware was required. It's given me opportunity to write this as I sit in the car, charging every imaginable object whilst the engine is running. One trick we learned last time we had a car without an auxiliary battery, is we'd set the fridge temperature considerably lower a bit before we needed to stop. When we'd stop, we'd set it back up to the normal temperature. Doing so gave us a good few hours of additional run time because the temperature would take a while to rise from the lower temp up to the higher preset. Cassie returned with fresh vegetables amongst other things, one of which looked like a huge green chili. I posed a gentle suggestion that it looked like a chili but Cassie insisted it wa
s a capsicum.

Dinner tonight was Bruschetta, topped with beautiful fresh tomato and green chili... a discovery made one decent mouthful into it. (Cassie: Oops!)

Today we've not found Parisian merchants to be very lovable. We were very polite, talking in French, many bonjour's, SVP's, merci's and au-revoir's but are consistently rewarded with grunts. Maybe they are sick of tourists? But then again, Munich, Prague, Kiev and Brugge merchants seemed more than happy to engage with tourists. We are the constant in this equation, and so far, these mob are sticking out with a bad attitude. It's not a matter of matching preconceptions either. We were very excited to visit Paris and use what little language we had that wasn't Russian. It'd be fair to say that if you got out of the city and into the country, you'd get a totally different feel - this seems the same the world over. (Cassie: It needs to be noted that the girl in the supermarket was lovely to us).

One comical example was a fine specimen at a street cafe:
me: 'Bonjour monsieur'
it: 'Do you want lunch?' (He was speaking English to us and we were trying to do the polite thing and speak in as much French as we could)
me: 'Non monsieur, cafe?' pointing to an unoccupied table in the corner

He grunted as if we had asked for the world. Once we sat down he removed the cutlery, removed the napkins and placemats... wait for it.... removed the table top, revealing a round table. We're simple people. A square table, round table, no table. We're not fussed, obviously he was.

me: 'Un cappachino et un chad chocolat svp'
it: 'So one cappachino and one hot chocolate'
me: 'Oui svp, oh, 'sorry' et un creme brulee svp' (I didn't know what sorry was, but I figured he would)
it: grunt mumble

He delivered our goods, the creme brulee was HUGE. Like a quiche dish, but about half the size. Oh damn it was good though. Cassie reported the worst coffee the whole trip - that's saying something. It did look like yellow dish water, but my hot chocolate was good. Little tip to travelers to Europe - make sure your bank cards have the chips in them. Hardly anyone accepts swipe EFTPOS in Europe. Cassie thankfully has one card with a chip, but our joint ones and my one does not.

The attached picture of the chair is to irritate anyone who was expecting touristy photos around Paris - You'll have to wait.
The second photo is of a girl with a Hello Kitty crash helmet. And her scooter with the handbag hook.

Video

The video as promised:

Brugge/Bruges

Cassie: This is a seriously pretty city. Again, we’re staying smack in the middle of it living in fear of our car getting towed away. The parking machine didn’t work so we couldn’t buy a ticket for it. Oh well, we have no choice but to leave it where it is and see what happens because there’s hardly anywhere to park it. Hopefully it’s too heavy for them to tow away with any tow truck that could fit down these tiny, narrow streets. We’ve been told by the hotel reception that they don’t clamp cars around here. I think I’d rather the threat of a clamp than have the car disappear on a tow truck! Anyway, we’ll walk around to it tomorrow morning holding our breath and will hopefully be able to let it out with relief when we see the car still there. We’re really not that worried, I’m just dramatising!

Our hotel for tonight. You can just see part of the city canals on the right side of the picture

Today has felt like a real taste of how a European holiday should be. We started out our stay in Brugge by visiting a chocolate museum (when in Rome…or I should say Belgium). How could we leave Belgium with not having done something chocolate related!? At the end of the museum a chocolatier gave us a demonstration on how they make their basic chocolates and then we got the all important, much anticipated taste! We got to sample a hazelnut ganache-filled milk chocolate delight. Oh yes, it was gooOood. There are heaps and heaps of chocolatiers around this joint. It was hilarious to see a lady unashamedly stuffing her face with one chocolate after another right outside a chocolate shop. I question whether or not she was breathing she was stuffing them in that fast. She must’ve had some mad craving!

This was the chocolate we got after the demonstration by the chocolatier. The little fella didn’t last long!

This is the demonstration area

After that we simply strolled around, had some lunch, I bought some new shoes (I just had to because they’re so cool!), and coffee at a funky cafe.

A quote inside a chocolate wrapper

We have already booked a spot at a caravan park outside of Paris for a few nights. We think it’s unrealistic to have the car in Paris. Not only do we not fit into any parking garages because the Troopie is too high, we’ve heard that Paris is fairly limited when it comes to parking. So, we’re taking a different approach this time, staying outside of Paris for about 16.50 Euros a night which apparently also includes free wi-fi (not bad for a caravan park - you beautie!) and a metro station is about 700m down the road and it takes only 20mins to get into the city. Umm, awesome! It’ll be nice to know the car is somewhere safe and not potentially parked illegally while we’re out exploring.

Here is our photo album too: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/PragueToBrugge?authkey=Gv1sRgCObI8JmSiKawpAE

Ok, the real story

***To anyone who has not watched the teaser video below, you simply must watch it first. Scroll down***
Awards go to David & Jon for figuring out the riddle.

Graeme: The real story. Ok by now, anyone worth half their weight would have looked at our GPS locations and figured out where we were.
We went to Nurburg, to drive the Nurburg Ring's north loop (Nordshleif). We like to keep this as interesting for you as it is for us, so suspense was all part of it. Plus there is always a chance 'public runs' (I can't remember the proper German name for it) will be canceled or not scheduled for the day, so we didn't want to risk more disappointment.
Sure, it's probably not the first Australian car on the Nurburg ring, but you can bet it's a one in a million deal. Needless to say we saw heaps of Australians, but none in their own car and equally few hiring one and going for a blap.

To those who don't know, Nurburg's North loop is some ~20KM of turns, sharp descents and ascents surrounding the town of Nurburg. Jackie Stewart, a famous race driver coined it 'Green Hell'. When we'd planned this trip from the beginning, we had to come and give it a go. We're much happier to have given it a blap at this end of the trip, not the beginning!

The video will be uploaded in its entirety tomorrow.

Taking the troopie round was awesome!!! This isn't playstation people! 3 tonne, ~96KW diesel, mud terrain tyres and 100KG on the roof. What a hoot! We were one of the first ones out of the gate, taking off disappointingly slow onto the main straight. Like merging onto a highway up a hill it was laborious. Down the next hill it started to come into it's own. It's all about momentum with this beast. After a few quick corners a 90' right-hander washed our speed away. You'll see from the video a car just driving in pit lane was no doubt going faster than us.
If you ever see us on the right hand side of the track, you can bet we were indicating for someone to go past us. Staggeringly, some cars and bikes stayed behind, and when they went past, they were not going much faster at all. How were we possibly leading the pack? Two things the training revealed and is difficult to appreciate, is that 80% of the corners are blind corners, and that there is 300M altitude difference across the track. Holy hell! Having never driven the track before, not even so much as knowing the direction of each turn keeps you on your toes. I had played it before on playstation, but the ~150 odd corners tests your virtual memory. One piece of research I did suggested the biggest failing of bringing road cars to 'the ring', is people fry brakes. I was very mindful for this not to occur to us, with no airbags, crumple-zones and all those niceties. One more thing to consider when watching, is that this track was designed in the 1920's and therefore has 1920's
safety. There is hardly any room for run off. Ouch. I hope that doesn't all sound like excuses?

One corner I'd forgotten about is in the video around 4:34 when you hear the kettle roll out of the cabinet. Thank goodness for that car in front of us because I suspect we wouldn't have seen that corner as you can see so many before have also missed. 3/4 on the temperature gauge is the new record, but then again, I doubt it's ever had quite the 'workload' that it just had. Cassie, the ultimate co-driver, was quick to turn the heater on for some additional cooling! When we'd finished, we quickly hid the camera away (filming is prohibited) and went to the hire car place to pickup the next part of our adventure. Interestingly enough when we pulled up, the tyres were really sticky, but the brakes were virtually stone cold!... should have gone much harder!

The night and day change was the substitution of a Renault Megane, with it's ~2L turbocharged kick in the pants. For the first lap of all rentals, the instructor must accompany you. Initially I was really disappointed and inwardly angry that this technicality meant Cassie would miss out on this, but in hindsight, so many people would crash straight away, so I see why they do it. If you had plans of doing a few laps, the instructor would have been good training. Even now, with all maturity and calmness over me, he was still a major kill joy. As a passenger, I would have been the same. I wouldn't let some stranger drive within 80% of their limit with me in the passenger seat. The troopie was relatively more fun as I wasn't getting poo pooed at every opportunity. All that aside, it was still worth it, and if we'd have booked more laps, the laps after him would have been an absolute blast.The car was STUNNING! It's a RenaultSport R26R. Front wheel drive, carbon fiber bonnet, no
rear seats, hardly any soundproofing, roll cage and 6 point harness... this is a factory configuration people! The absence of soundproofing meant you could hear the roar of the air intake, or exhaust, or a combination of both when it came on boost. Either way it was thoroughly a treat to the ears. This very model achieved a time of 8 minutes something on this very track by a Renault test driver during development. Unfortunately, I don't know what my time was in this thing, but I'd estimate 12 minutes. It handled like it was on rails. No exaggeration. It would out-handle me by a factor of three! There was sooooooooooooooooooo much braking power, so much horse power and so much handling in reserves it was beyond words. 227HP, 310NM, 6.5second 0-100 time.

As we took off down the straight, it was cutting out like crazy at around 4000 RPM, like hitting the rev limiter, but at nearly half of it's 7000 RPM red line. Turned out it does this when it's not yet warm. Fair enough. Either way, it was still properly quick when we took off down the straight.
Note to self - must return and bring hoards of people with me. Spend a week here.

Cassie:
Graeme and I were originally thinking we would be spending two nights and one whole day around the town of Nurburg and surrounds to incorporate a blast around the track with ol' Troops and another the next evening in the Renault Megane. The reason for this thought was that public sessions usually run from 5pm - 7pm each day unless the track has been booked for something else. So we were under the impression the line up would be huge to get onto the track so we would only get one chance to go around one evening and would have to reserve the other run for the next evening. But, being mid-week our timing was perfect and there actually weren't many people around so, after both of us feeling a bit let down that the town of Nurburg is tiny and what on earth are we going to do there for the next 24hrs, it hit me like a tonne of bricks, why don't we do both runs in the one evening then we're free to do something else the next day!? I felt like the little girl on the Old el Paso ad wh
o suggests why don't we have both soft and hard taco shells!? We were both so excited that after a spot of lunch in a beautifully quaint town near Nurburg, we spun round to the place that hires cars out for the Nurburg Ring, parted with the cash and spent the next hour looking for a vantage spot for me to drive to so I could film Graeme zooming round a corner.

At our chosen vantage point, we met a German guy, Christian, who is a freelance photographer. He not only recognised that we are from Australia, he knew where New South Wales is because he lived in Byron Bay for a while! The world is so small in ways. His first inkling that we must be Australian was when Graeme walked past him with a cuppa in hand, wearing our distinct, hardy boots and also the kind smile and wave hello Graeme gave him. Then, when he turned around he was amazed to see from our car that sure enough, these guys are Aussie! I saw him walking around our car in awe so I said Hi and the first words out of his mouth were, "Did you bring this car from Australia!?". The Germans have been so friendly and warm to us. Not once have we been made to feel unwelcome anywhere we've been. I've lost count how many times someone has waved, given us a thumbs up and taken our picture on the autobahns. Seriously, we'll be driving along at 100kph or so and all of a sudden there'll b
e a car travelling beside us and when we look over there's big smiles, waves, thumbs up. It's fun that they're sharing our excitment at being here.

Anyway, back to the real story, the Nurburg Ring was such a thrill! We took Troopie around first and OMG, I've never been so scared in my life! Through the 154 corners on the ~20km track, I was literally gripping on to the "Jebus" bar in the car for probably 149 of the corners and my mouth was totally dry by the end of it. I think it's a scarier experience as a passenger. But, having said that, do I want to drive it? Nyet with a capital 'N'. Would I go out on it again? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe next time in a car that doesn't have such a high centre of gravity so hopefully the cornering isn't so sickening.

Seeing Graeme fly around the corner on the track was breathtaking, for a couple of reasons. It was amazing to see him accomplishing something that he really wanted to do, but my adrenalin was pumping. A race track is a full on place, especially when full of people who aren't used to a race track. I was a mixture of pride and worry when I saw him and in fact, if you look closely at that part of the footage on our video, you can see it shaking ever so slightly - that's me shaking from adrenalin and a bit of fear! Graeme wasn't concerned at all, he even managed a wave from the car as he drove around the corner!

We stuffed up our timing through Germany a little bit so missed out on seeing things like the Dachau concentration camp museum, the Porsche factory tour and the Porsche museum and I was feeling a little bit sad that it felt like we were missing out a little bit on such a wonderful country. But, hey, the Nurburg Ring! It's totally made up for it.

Teaser Video

Cryptic Post

Graeme:
I will tell a story with a wealth of clues and ambiguity. Once I have a chance to edit together the 14 something minutes of footage, you'll get the real story. Cassie drove this morning's shift. Some 200 odd KM of beautiful scenery and typical autobahn. Wind generators dotted the horizion. We pulled over to swap drivers and I drove about another 50KM. We had to buy a ticket for the toll road, and at 26 Euro it'd want to be a decent drive. We managed to find some gas canisters in a local hardware store. After that, we had a brilliant late lunch of hamburger and wedges whilst watching a wealth of brilliant new Porches, Ferrarai's and BMW's idle by. That sure was a lot of W's! After a late lunch, we went to somewhat of an information centre, then were back on the road by 5. Again, more beautiful scenery, some oddly familiar. Huge variations in altitude meant the car was warming up, but I guess it heated up in line with brakes and tyres. In what felt like a flash, the road had re
turned to where it had started. That was beatiful, well worth the cost. Not content with seeing it once, we returned to the information centre to see if there was a more immersing means of transport as I suspected driving the rough old troopie on this beautiful road was almost detracting from the experience. Indeed they did. Others too had come before we were told, also not satisfied with the experience they had. We were sent on our way again, but Cassie was more interested in taking photos, so the tour guide accompanied me instead. Off we go again, the tour guide offering a wealth of local knowledge. The road meandered by again, but somehow different this time. Like night and day something had changed. Again we'd returned to the information centre and I waited for Cassie some five minutes to come pick me up. We should have brought two cars!

Cassie picked me up, we drove into the bush to setup camp. Had dinner of zucchini, potatos and garlic with crusty bread. With half the crusty bread left over, it was drizzled with honey for a brilliant end to a brilliant day.

Tomorrow we plan to head for Brooge, we'll camp a little bit outside so we get a full day there the following day. We plan to be in Paris from the 22nd, so there's a good chance we'll catch up with some more family friends.

..To anyone who has suspected what was going on here, keep your comments to yourself. Once the teaser video is out you can do as you please! I suspect you will have this tomorrow if we find wifi.... fingers crossed!

Responses to comments:
Steven - So pleased to have you commenting again. You would have loved today's 'scenery'
Steven - I'll happily race you on a segway!
Warren - Yeah, they are good. And they should be in Canberra already.
Chris - I did consider getting a bag for a client of ours who works with indigenous affairs, but I feared they wouldn't see the funny side.

Hardware store bread

Graeme:
Today felt wasted. We turned up at Stuttgart, and by no surprise, the museum was closed. We had a look around what turned out to be a used Porsche lot, but they all looked entirely brand new. They were tantalizingls cheap too. I felt a bit inferior around all the suits entirely as if we were not entitled to be there. Hopefully that feeling will one day pass. We left for our next destination. More KM's. We needed some bread and gas canisters, so we programmed 'Juliet' to look for a super market. We left the autobahn and stumbled on a hardware chain called OBI. We figured this would be more likely to yield gas canisters. Nup. We walked around for 15 minutes. SO close, smaller & larger gas canisters, gas cookers (which included 2 canisters), but none of the extremely popular one we used. It looks as if they had sold out. We bought bread at the front of the hardware store and headed on back to the highway. We chose to try a supermarket chain that resembled Aldi, but was maybe cal
led Lidel. Turning left into the driveway, the steering bound up a bit. Nothing alarming, but it wasn't normal. I've since adjusted the offending ball-joint and it's not done it since. Isn't it funny, the only non-genuine Toyota bit on this rig is the bit that's failing. Can you imagine the look on the mechanic's face when I return to have them replaced again, having only done 25,000KM in 6 months. One would think by looking at out blog posts that we have a strange affiliation or affection with M&M's. Nope, they are just available all over... including the hardware store. Would you believe these ones taste slightly different? Different market, different tastes I suspect.

Position: 12-09-17 17:35:47 +0200 +0000
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Leaving

Cassie:
The past couple of days with Gisela and Hans have been wonderful. They're exceptionally kind people and wonderful hosts. After a casual Sunday morning breakfast of fruit, bacon, eggs, toast and tea (we have been very looked after!) they drove us to the alps. What an amazing place! The mountains are out of this world beautiful. The scenery is like nothing I've ever seen before. We were so close to Austria at that point that over the other side of the mountains we were looking at was an Austrian village. We couldn't see it, but Hans assured us that it was there.

Graeme and I have been overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of Gisela and Hans during our stay with them. We were really sad to have to say goodbye to them this afternoon. They made us feel so comfortable and welcome. It made me realise how much I miss home now.

Graeme:
We think they were a little shocked to hear we were leaving. We're a little sombre after leaving. I think they genuinely enjoyed our company as much as we did theirs. We do however need to push on and cover some distance. We've driven maybe 50-60KM down the road, had dinner and fueled up. We had planned to visit the Porsche museum tomorrow in Stuttgart, but only just realised it will be Monday... the only day they are not open. fiddle-dee-dee. That's SO annoying! We missed out on the factory tour, now this. Far out!

As we were trying to find a camp tonight, we pulled over to let a car past while we looked for spots. After we drove up the road, he was stopped with his hazards flashing. We drove around him because it was only narrow and there was an intersection. It looked like he was trying to figure out his GPS. We drove down the road a little further and he put his lights on high beam. I pulled over, a little hightened, thiking, oh here we go. He drove beside us and asked in a broken german accent 'Do you need directions? I live around here', No thank you was the reply and he went on his merry way. Again, the generosity is staggering.

We both had a great sleep last night, and with all the 'mountaineering' today, we're looking forward to a good sleep again.
The autobarn's are impressive. They are much better now that we're on a three lane one. Two lanes was too difficult to overtake. You could never gain enough speed to make a gap in the fast lane without inconveniencing anyone.
Picture: Launch pad for hangliders. No turning back.


Position: 12-09-16 21:29:18 +0200 +0000
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