Sunday 26th January; one day in Poland

Slubice - Ostrów Mazowiecka,  Poland 561km

This morning after breakfast Tanguy and Gert-jan first tried to fix some things on Gert-jan’s car. Turned out that besides the broken starting engine there was also a bold broken from the exhaust manifold. And a broken wire from the positive battery cable. Luckily the boyks are handy and around 10:30 we were ready to leave towards Warschau.

We mostly took the new toll highway, a good road but almost as boring as Germany. Most exiting part was the litle shortcut we took to start the day with. Driving the same highway twice was really out of the question.

But once back on the highway it was just driving straight a head for miles. Because Tanguy was really tired, maybe from a jetlag or maybe last night was a bit to cosy, I was allowed to drive. Mostly Tanguy is driving and I don’t get a change, except when he is tired or sick.

No hands (just kidding)

While I was driving I noticed that the fuel was a bit low, so I asked Tanguy if i needed to stop at the first petrol station, but no, I could easily make it to the second on, he said. Guess what? He was so wrong, so we had to stop along the highway to empty the tin with extra petrol into the tank. And off course Tanguy wanted to drive again, so that was my short time behind the wheel.

First plan was to stay overnight in Warschau, but then we realized that tomorrow morning will probably be very busy because it's Monday. We didn’t want to get stuck in traffic in the morning, and it was already to late to visit the city and do some sightseeing, so we decided to drive a but further.

Tunnel on the way in Warschau 

I found a hotel about an hour from Warschau along the route we were taking and we decided to stay there for the night. The hotel is also a museum and has a special history. The building was built by the Germans during the second world war as a storage for the battle of Stalingrad. in the cold war the part were we are sleeping was used as a anti-atomic shelter, and now it is a museum and hotel.

On our way to the hotel petrol was going low again and no petrol station in sight, so for the second time today we stopped to empty the fuel tin into the tank. Maybe it’s wise to keep better track of the fuel usage of the car 🤔

After this stop we drove to the hotel, tomorrow we will find a petrol station and fill up the car and the tin with extra fuel.

In frond of the hotel

Local honey beer, very much honey 🍯 

Our room, very authentic 

We turned into bed pretty early today, tomorrow we go to the “don’t think you can get some sleep” hostel in Riga, so I think we need al the rest we can today. I put in my earplugs and hopefully get a good night sleep, even though it is pretty loud outside with heavy traffic.

Goodnight to you all.

Saturday 25th January; crossing Germany

Oldenzaal - Slubice 620km

Today we had to drive the most boring part of the raid, crossing Germany by highway. About 600km straight forward. Weather was ok, sometimes a little light rain, but nothing too serious.

Todays trip (it took us a bit longer than the 4 u 50 min 😂)

We left at the van Asperen residency around 9.30 after a good breakfast and went toward Germany. First stop was at a pharmacy just on the other side of the border to get me some painkillers. Friday morning while packing i made a wrong movement and my neck got frozen, not a good way to start a road-trip of a month. Luckily you can buy good painkillers in Germany so soon the pain was ok to deal with.

Next stop was a the liquor store to buy enough Jagermeister for the daily safe arrival drink at the end of each day during the raids. And then we really were on our way.

Being, as said before, the most boring part of the raid there is not much to tell and we almost arrived at the hotel in Lubice without any trouble. Almost.....

We just crossed the border with Poland when i tried to find us a hotel for the night, I found a really nice and payable hotel only 4 km away. Only little point was that we just passed the exit and had to make a d-tour of 20 km. But i already booked and payed, so we drove to the next exit to turn around. We did one stop at a gas station and when we left there Gert-jan told us over the radio that there was something wrong with his car. We decided to find a safe place to stop and have a look, but before we found one we had to make an emergency stop along the high way. His battery wasn’t charging anymore and his lights went out, not a good thing on a highway in the dark. So we stopped at the safety lane to have a look. The car was smelling badly as if something was burning, and soon we found out that the starting engine got stuck and wiring was melted. With a hammer the boys fixed the starter engine being stuck part, but the starting engine was finished. Luckily the battery loading problem was fixed and lights were working again, so we gave Gert-Jan a tow to get the car started and went to the hotel, deciding to have a better look tomorrow when daylight was back.

The hotel turned out te be a good  choice. Nice room, good restaurant end not too expensive. After a drink in our room we went to the restaurant for a good meal. Tanguy had salmon, I had duck and Gert-jan wild boar. The food was well prepared.

After dinner i went to bed, while the boys had some more drinks and chats and made friends with a group of Belgium guys who turned out to be a hunting group. 

Not a bad way to start the raid. 

Goodnight. 

Friday 24th January: Finally!!!

The Hague - Oldenzaal 204 km

After two years of preparing today was finally the  day! The raid has started for us.

Last couple of day had been pretty hectic and a bit stressful, I think until know we didn’t really realize that two raids ment two times the preparations. So more road-books to be filled with nice places to see,  but also two times the number of road-books to print and bind. That combined with Tanguy being away in Houston most of the times and being home only one week before today, and my own work (yesterday I had a 13 hour workday) made the last few day’s a bit less relaxed than we hoped. 

Some friends will take the stuff for the classic raid

Luckily i did all the other “normal” preparations well before, so this morning all I had to do was clean the house a bit (my brother is taking care of it during our holidays), do some last shopping and pack the car. 

Tanguy had to work so I did the last things myself. Around four Tanguy was also ready for today and we could leave.

All ready to be packed in the car

Ready to go

The first trip of  193 km went without problems and at 19:00 we arrived at the van Asperen house with cake, because (I almost forgot) today is also my birthday 🎂.

The organization 

We had a nice evening and now we are going to sleep. Tomorrow we head towards Poland, trying to go as far as we can in one day without stress. After that we have till Tuesday to get to Tallin and catch the ferry to Helsinki. 

Good night. 

Almost......

Almost.......

It has been a while since we reported on a trip here, but on January 24 we will start a new adventure.  A good moment to start writing again. This year you can also follow us on Polarsteps, a link will follow on the first day of the adventure.

So, were will we be going this time? To the north of course 😁. But this time to the Nordcape. We are going to make two trips through Sami-land, our also known as Lapland.
This are the routes:

This one will be with around 12 cars i think, there were more cars, but we had last minute cancellations.

This one will be with about 18 cars, if i remember correctly. 

We will leave home on my birthday, the 24th of January. Great birthday present, one month holiday 😊. That evening we will spent at Gert-jan’s place and the next morning we will take of together with Gert-jan. Our plan is to go to Ruutana through Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In Tallinn we take a short ferry trip to Helsinki. On 29 

Th of Januari the first group will join us and the extreme raid will start. On the 7th of February this group will meet the Classic group in Jokkmokk, were the annual Sami market is at that moment.

Bouth groups will spent two nights in Jokkmokk. On the 8th of February the Extreme group will go home, and we take of with the Classic raid. On 17th of February this raid will be ending as well and we have 2 days to get to Goteborg to catch the ferry witch will take us to Kiel. From there we have a few day’s left to get back home.

It took quite a lot of planning and preparing the last two years to get to this point. Lot’s of advertising on world meetings. We had a couple of pré-meetings as well. And a slippery road course.

Reunion Raid Murmansk July 2018

 Wintermeeting in Winterberg febr 2019

2CV Wereldmeeting Kroatie zomer 2019 

Slipery roads course  Zandvoort  nov/dec 2019.            

Last preparations

Home

Slightly tired we left the ferrie this morning. Luckily getting off the schip was a lot quicker than getting onboard. So at ten we were on our way home. After a stop for breakfast at McDo we were home around 12.30.

It was a great holyday and much too short. We were very lucky with the weather all three weeks and did almost everything we wanted to do. And we have a good reason for going back to do the things we didn’t do this time.

Souvenirs

Until our next adventure 😃

Last night in Newcastle, before taking the ferry back home

We decided to spent our last UK night in Newcastle, having some drinks and eating out. Plan was to find a legal and save camperstop in the city and sleep in the Van there. Google didn’t give us any spots so we decided to drive to the center and go to tourist information to ask were it was allowed to camp over night. After asking several people if they new were the tourist information was we ended up in the library. There was this service point of the city counsel. Almost the same as where I used to work in The Hague. They probably know a lot about city tax, parking permits and possibilities for eldery, but they knew nothing about tourist information or camperstops. She did give us a phone number on a paper and the possibility to call the parking devision for free. And that was it, we had to find out the rest ourselves. So Tanguy made some calls and we could park on this coach parking near the Arena. 

We drove over to the parking and after one look decided that this was not a very save place.

So after two hours of searching we ended up on this small farm camping about eight miles outside of Newcastle. Between cattle and sheep, even with real sheepdogs.

Sheep


Our camping spot

A dog was driving the sheep

After settling in we called a taxi and went to town. The taxi driver was a really nice guy and droped us off at the “under the bridge tavern”. Which was litterly under the bridge and a really nice place with their own brewery.

Tavern Under the Bridge beer

Unfortunately the beer wasn’t really my tast, but the pub was very nice.

We left for some Italian, and then came back for some more drinks. Then the pub closed and we had to go back to the campsite. We phoned the taxi company and had a whisky while we waited. We didn’t want to take the taxis outside because they would be twice as expensive. We rather spend our money on whisky.

This morning after paying for the campsite (we couldn’t find the owner yesterday) we went to this large Asda and then to the largest shopping mall in Europe for lunch. They had a Wagamama there, so that’s were we had lunch 😋.

Wagamama lunch

It was delicious. After lunch there was no time to do some more shopping, we had to go to the ferry.

Driving over the Tyne bridge. One of many bridges in New Castle Upon Tyne


On time at the ferry terminal

We start to learn the drill and were nicely on time at the ferry terminal. Checking in went quick, but then it took forever to get all the cars on board. Looked like they were making this 1000000 jigsaw puzzle. Fitting in one car at the time, then two motorbikes etc. etc., and we were almost the last car to fit in. Just five minutes before setting sale we were onboard the ship.

Boarding the ferry

Finally on board we went to the sundeck to wave the UK goodbye for now.

Bye New Castle, bye UK

Later that night we had a lot of fun on board, I am sure the two bottles of Prosecco had nothing to do with that 🤪. We played Bingo as proper Scots. And lost of course. 

The band was good, and the drunken English girls were great entertainment. In Holland you would think she forgot to put on trousers, but after living in Scotland for some time I know that is not the case 😂.

A good last evening of a great holiday.

Drunk English girls 


Very funny 😄 




Good night