journey - Team Rover
Penny Reeves
[Written up Fri 19th]
Team Rover (Chris Densham, Becka Lawson, Mark Fearon & Penny Reeves)
Set off from Cambridge at 6.30pm on Monday 15th August. Despite Rover losing incredible amounts of oil on the way, the 11.59pm ferry from Dover to Calais was reached on time. Once off the ferry it took 26 hours to reach Hilder's, where Rover arrived at 5am on Wednesday morning, to find that Hugh had arrived from Greece the night before.
Team Rover Amendment
Animal had unfortunately only screwed up the rocker cover bolts finger tight so they _poured_ out oil. Eventually sussed out what it was and arrived at Dover. I wrote 8 letters on the ferry, then they refused to _take_ the berluddy things. Then off to Hilda's. 4 of us in Rover, ie. 3 in the front, then this mangled dwarf had to squat in the back, in a cubby hole. Chris made it comfy enough, by dint of shoving all the gear onto the front seat, so we were all perched at 45°, lifting the windscreen... Later, Chris got so overheated, he stripped off to his luscious pink Y-fronts - unfortunately, he didn't get any more decent when he set off driving - got out at a petrol station and asked the shocked attendant 'Normal?'. Stuffed Chris back to Rover to get him decent and filled up. Various problems with windscreen wiper, ie. had to be operated manually. Some sod overtook Chris, then braked, so Chris managed to actually skid Rover... We overheated quite badly on the final pass (110° engine), so I walked it, as Rover cooled off. There'd been an enormous storm last night and lots of soil had washed down onto the road. Eventually arrived about dawn, dead.
Team Hugh arrived from Greece after an eventful two weeks there - including the exploration of _Bekiris Cave_ on Spetsai (survey on request!), a rather nice sea cave. A few days in Athens were followed by the amazingly slow train to Belgrade, where life was sharpened by running after a rapidly accelerating train (containing (a) luggage, (b) passport, (c) the only way to get to Austria !) which decided that it wanted to go to München rather more rapidly than I did. After eventually catching up with my possessions, I went to Salzburg with Karin (an amazingly dumb American girl) [Tautology - Ed.] and thence to Hilda's, where I was allowed to kip in her sin-bin type place (rather confusingly called the 'lager' which has visions of sleeping lots of beer!) Fri 19th _Team Sharman arrival_
Chris, Sue, Jared, Adam.
Left Calais ~12 o'clock
Eventless
Got lost nr. Luxembourg; Nearly running out of petrol due to Jared falling asleep (maybe).
Autobahn became rather busy, full of maniacs pulling out at 60 when everyone else was doing ~100.
By ~10am getting very hot in the car. Drove a lot. Got mildly lost going into Saltzburg, although fairly quickly got through the traffic jams. Arrived at Hilder's at ~1.30 & went up to the lake to find those already walking back. Pissed around in the lake with Ian's blow up boat, tried to sink a buoy & punctured the boat.
Had tea, drank beer, sacked out.
Something exciting may have happened but I was probably asleep at the time.
Team Millars.
Arrived ½ hour after Sharmans after leaving Calais at the same time.
Passed 2 times by Sharmans. Didn't get lost on route.