London to Sydney
Steve's Diary !
Days 9 to 12
Day 9 - Thessaloniki (Greece) to Alexandroupoli (Greece) 13-06-04; 460km
My turn to drive and we had a late start this morning (8.30am) which was great because we were up late getting the spare parts we needed. We didn't get to bed until 1.30am. We had three long gravel stages today and they were awesome. We were running 2 minute intervals but on all three stages we caught cars. We were quite badly held up on the first stage when we caught the P76 with about 5km to go.
He couldn't see us for his dust, and we couldn't see a thing so dawdled the last few k's behind him. Still, overall they were great stages, quite fast and gentle uphill, reasonably rough. We are getting into Astra country now.
One low point is out Terratrip packed it in (See Note 1). Well, the electronic black box that converts the signal from the speedo to the terratrip has shit itself . At least we still have the speedo.
It was quite interesting today having me call the distances to the navigator and him relate the appropriate corners. Actually I am more concerned about getting lost in the transport stages than anything else with the missing terratrip. We will have to get it fixed for Oz as I hate to imagine taking a wrong turn in the desert..it could be 100km before we realize.
We had a 330km tour down a freeway to our hotel in Alexandroupoli on the border with Turkey. It's a coastal resort town and quite nice. The drive was fast 140-150km'h all the way. In fact we have been able to travel these speeds on all the freeways across Europe so far. It really makes light work of distance and shows how incredibly restrained Australia is.
I am not looking forward to the 5000km in Oz at 100km/h in fear of police and speed camera's looking for every single dollar they can fleece from us. Heaven help I should cruise like everyone does in the rest of the world, I'd be thrown in jail.
Day 10 – Alexandroupoli (Greece) to Bursa (Turkey) 14-06-04; 350km
First thing this morning we had to drive 50km to the Turkish border. It was a very slow process getting through and took about 2 hours. Consequently we were late to our first stage which was about 50km inside Turkey. It was a long gravel stage (23km) and the first chance for Paul to drive on gravel.
He did a good job and managed to get quite a good time. Also notably he didn't really scare me in the stage.
We had a small 50km transport to our second stage, a 15km tarmac stage. We had to chance to tarmac tyres before the stage. We needn't have bothered as the stage was so chopped up, gravelly and bouncy that most drivers took it very cautiously. Of course it was also uphill so a bit tough for us.
We then had a 250km touring stage into our overnight accommodation at Bursa. The roads in Turkey are very rough and damaged in comparison to Greece. The villages are also quite run down. But the people extremely friendly and we were getting plenty of waves and toots along the way.
Day 11 – Bursa (Turkey) to Ankara (Turkey) 15-06-04; 650km
Today we have 2 tarmac stages near Bursa before a 500km drive down the highway to Ankara to put the car on the Antonov. The first stage was very long (27km), uphill and windy. I was driving and we did a good time beating many people we didn't expect to. The stage was so long and windy that Paul began to feel very nauseous navigating. The second stage was only 11km, but even more windy and this time up hill then down. Again we did ok.
We had a very long drive into Ankara, much of it on a very quiet but excellent motorway cruising at 160km/h for 2-3 hours. We got into Ankara and loaded the car with tyres and spares from the service van and I had to take the car to the airport to load onto the Antonov. That was an experience as my car was to go on the upper deck. I didn't have enough rev's to get up and the car ran out of power and drive near the very top of the ramps. The Antonov crew had to winch me up the rest of the way.
After we loaded the cars we went back to the hotel for a quick sleep and 5am wake up call tocatch our charter flight to Cochin India. We arrived there at about 8pm on 16 th June and collected the car from the airport tarmac and drove to our hotel 1km down the road.
And what a shit hotel it is. It is called the Abad hotel . I think it should be the A(very)bad hotel. I cannot believe the organizers would put us in a hotel that doesn't serve grog, and had absolutely zero facilities. Nothing. A completely boring and baron hotel.
Day 12 – Rest Day Cochin (India) 17-06-04
Today we slept in…about time. When we got downstairs the car park was a hive of activity with everybody servicing their cars.
Out little Astra remained locked in the car park with nothing to do on it. At least nothing that Paul and I are capable of doing. We took our spare tyres and the few spare parts we had an loaded them into the rally truck that is following us and that's all.
