Bee-bee certainly picks her moments… The first time she broke down was in Russia when the alternator died and the battery ran flat leaving us stranded across a railway line!
Last weekend she again threw her toys from the pram at the most opportune moment! On Saturday prior to leaving for a family camping trip she refused to start. The car was packed, the fridge was loaded, the batteries were charged, she turned over, but just refused to start. On closer inspection I noticed the glow-plug warm-up light wasn’t coming on either. After a few checks with the meter and a quick visit to the Hilux Surf Forum I diagnosed the problem as the Electronic Control Unit (ECU). Hopefully. It seems that it’s a common problem with at least two other people on the forum suffering the same fault this year. As it’s Bee-bee’s 20th birthday this year I’m wondering if Toyota have programmed a self-destruct sequence into the ECU! So with a little white hire car in place we headed off camping with my nieces while Bee-bee missed out on all the fun, sat inactive and sulking on the driveway. The trip was planned to not only spend time with family but to also road-test all our kit prior to setting off again. The ECU has now been sent to the highly recommended ECU-Doctor. With a car our age these kinds of parts are not available new anymore. Buying one from a broker is risky, so the best course of action is to get the ECU repaired and remapped. The ECU-Doctor can diagnose and confirm the suspected fault, repair it and offer a 12-month guarantee in the process. Let’s hope I’ve diagnosed it correctly and that he can work his magic on Bee-bee’s brain!
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At the start of a long stretch of mind-numbing jobs and stupidly long hours to raise money for our trip I was discussing our plans to an employer when she fired the unexpected question at me “… but what will you do every day?” Such a basic, rational, yet strangely odd question but so difficult to answer. My normally animated adventure chit-chat was silenced and I found myself speechless for the first time when discussing 800 days. So, to clarify “what we do every day” here is a breakdown of our day-to-day 800 days activities; Driving
Exploring
Planning
Washing
Drinking
Eating
Sleeping
communication
Chores
Maintenance
Relaxing
As far as overland expo’s and festivals go, it’s not very often we find ourselves in the right place at the right time. So imagine our delight when we discovered that the Adventure Travel Film Festival (ATFF) was only one day away and then to discover it was located just 30minutes down the road! I nearly wet myself with excitement. Unfortunately due to the late notice (and lack of funds) we could only attend on Friday evening. Our ‘for one night only’ attendance didn’t dispel our enthusiasm for the event and excitedly we hit the road. On arrival we were welcomed by the naturally charismatic, overalled and recently named ‘Overlander of the Year’ by Expedition Portal, Austin Vince. Austin’s warm welcome set the tone for the evening. Austin however is only one half of the organising duo. Lois Pryce in her own right is a truly inspirational woman. Between them they have accomplished some great achievements. Austin was one of the first Europeans to traverse the Zilov Gap by motorcycle and reach Magadan after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This amazing feat predates Ewan and Charlie’s ‘Long Way Round’ trip by nearly 10 years. Lois is an accomplished writer, banjo picker and in 2003 rode a little Yamaha XT225 from the northernmost tip of Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America, solo! Clearly both Lois and Austin have a penchant for the vintage; this is reflected in Austin’s love of 70’s overalls and Lois’ love of historic expeditions and vintage British motorcycles. Something Emma can relate to as her late Grandfather (also a well travelled inspirational man) had three exceptionally clean Vincent’s; a Black Prince, a Comet and a little 45cc Firefly. This was the 3rd annual ATFF and it’s clear that Austin and Lois, along with an army of volunteers, know how to throw a party. The camping ground, full of adventure bikers, cyclists and a few overlanding 4x4’s was home to the 700+ crowd for the weekend; obviously, the audience sharing the same authentic passion for adventure as the organisers. Lois and Austin’s love of retro is also reflected in the appearance of the vintage cinema bus. The bus is a slice of cinema and automotive history, a truly unique vehicle. The festival is complimented with a schedule of workshops, seminars, displays, trade-stands and cooking competitions and demos. We attended Louise Wilson’s ‘Blogging from the Road’ presentation. The seminar was aimed at blogging virgins, albeit we managed to get a few new ideas to improve our own blog and website. We had the chance to have a little chat with both Louise and her partner David, you can download the interview here. Of the 15+ films that were screened over the weekend we only managed to catch Gaurav Jani’s very Indian ‘One Crazy Ride’. A tale of overloaded motorcycling camaraderie through the uncharted ‘roads’ of the Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh, in north-eastern India. The film is a touching story of brotherhood (and sisterhood) in the face of unforgiving terrain. On our return home we decided to purchase and download a few of the featured films. Tom Allen’s incredibly life affirming and at times raw and introspective ‘Janapar’ is an emotive story that gives the viewer a real insight into the struggles faced by solo long distance bicyclists. Beautifully shot, edited and with a well-crafted soundtrack this tale is more than just a travel film, it is a good old-fashioned love story that never fails to move! An unexpected late addition to the program was a talk given by an unpaid Ben Fogle entitled ‘The Accidental Adventurer’. Like many people attending I was unaware of the extent of his achievements. This quote from the synopsis of the book with the same name highlights some of his greatest.
“He has rowed across the Atlantic, walked to the South Pole, run the Sahara and skated across Sweden. He has encountered remote tribes-people in deepest Papua New Guinea, caused a Boeing 747 to dump £100k of fuel before making an emergency landing in Sao Paolo, and been mistaken for Prince William on numerous occasions.” Despite his Royal doppelgänger I think he missed the irony in denying he was posh as during his talk he “poo-pooed an idea” and “had blisters on his bottom”. Despite my internal sniggers, Ben Fogle has an endearing character and is a great public speaker. After hearing him talk I had a newfound respect for him. We also missed a great photo opportunity with him as I was in the queue for the burger stand! On its own admission and to its credit the ATFF is by no means a big Hollywood affair, I’ve certainly never heard of long-drop compost toilets in Cannes! And that is what makes this event so great. The 5-point manifesto states one of the aims of the ATFF is to bring together the adventure travel community. This criteria is certainly met. The festival has undoubtedly inspired us to think more about increasing and improving the quality of our own films. Our time back in the UK will give me a chance to catalogue and edit the hundreds of hours of footage we’ve shot so far. Maybe we’ll see our names in LED camp lights at next year’s event! Incidentally if you missed this festival you don’t have to wait a year before the next one just hop on a plane, jump on your bike, paddle your canoe or fire up your 4x4 and head to the Australian or U.S. leg, the latter being part of Overland Expo. If not, see you next year in Dorset! Andy Up until now, only facebook users have been fortunate (?) enough to view our ongoing Video Diaries or “Vlogs” (as modern technology terminology now calls them). Some of our experiences are simply not justified through still photos and writing. Take for example Andy’s depth-checking wade across a Mongolian river in his pants, off-road mud sliding or bone-shaking driving across corrugated Siberian roads.
From the rooftop of St Sofia’s Cathedral and the depths of ice caves to the glaciers of Norway and shore of Lake Baikal, hopefully these will reveal personal snapshots of our journey and allow another dimension into our adventure records. You can view all our ‘Vlogs’ on our very own 800days YouTube channel here; http://www.youtube.com/user/aroundtheworldin800/videos Emma Our second monthly update in Gallery Magazine can now be viewed online, this months theme for issue #7 is Miniature. You can view it here and also catch-up on issue #6 if you missed that one too.
Andy For me, Lush was a natural choice (literally) when it came to all things soap-like. Although we are travelling without access to ‘normal’ bathroom facilities, that is no reason to let personal hygiene slide! However, as most of our time will be spent camping in the wilderness we are conscious of ‘treading lightly’ so don’t want to leave any nasty chemicals, artificial bubbles or plastic bottles in our wake. In addition, bottles of liquid shampoo, soaps and moisturisers are heavy and every extra gram makes the car heavier and less economical.
Our shampoo, conditioner, hand moisturiser, soap and even deodorant are all solid bars; no water as an ingredient means no preservatives and no packaging (minimising waste). Each shampoo bar lasts between 80 and 100 washes and barely weighs anything. Our deodorant does not contain aluminium to block pores (most anti-perspirants do!) using gentler elements to minimise sweating. ‘Dream Cream’ contains Camomile and Calamine to soothe sunburnt or ‘stung’ skin in addition to moisturising. Toothpaste tubes cannot be recycled (taking over 450 years to degrade!); we use solid ‘Toothy Tabs’ which weigh 5 times less and come in a recycled cardboard box. Our seaweed Sea Vegetable soap contains sea salt and antiseptic lavender oil (to banish ‘nasties’) but will not leave horrid chemicals on the ground when we wash ‘al fresco’. We like companies with strong environmental and ethical values; Lush does not test on animals, everything is hand-made with fresh, fairly-traded ingredients (and they don’t even advertise their products). It’s good value too- with most expensive face creams you pay more for the supermodel who tells you how ‘great’ it is than the actual ingredients. Through careful choices like this we can be clean and smell nice for 800 days whilst minimising our impact on the planet we are exploring. Emma Visa processing times continue to keep our itchy feet on British soil; the good news is that we have been granted Kazakhstan and Mongolian Visas and are just waiting on Russia now. For all our planning and painstakingly precise lists there are still two big logistical questions before we hit the road; will it all fit in and will it all work? With bonus time on our hands we set off for 3 days camping on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Designated as an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’, this peninsula boasts the highest number of native wild flower species in Britain and is home to all seven of the UK’s reptile species. The weather has been gorgeously sunny throughout England over the past couple of weeks; we chose Burnbake Campsite, a quite woodland spot as the location for our overland overhaul.
Space was pretty much maxed-out as we drove off which has provoked some thought about how we can reduce our equipment to allow a less crammed-in carload. The majority of our possessions are organised into 13 Wolf Boxes which stack together and allow us to store and access our equipment easily and methodically. These have also controlled what we take with us; both Andy and I have limited ourselves to one box each for clothing and one for personal possessions. Throughout our travel trial the boxes were shuffled and re-packed, with some items being relegated as superfluous and others being added to a new list. Our rooftent is now a boudoir of luxury with new duvet and bedding, we have also fitted foam camping mats between the mattress and the fibreglass base for extra insulation when we venture close to the Arctic Circle. We fitted DIY hole-punch peg eyelets to the bottom of our awning walls to fix it securely to the ground and stop the sides flapping about in the wind. Some kitchen Feng-shui presented us with an efficient work area for food preparation; the industrial-lino-covered tailgate has already proved to be an excellent work surface. Our pristine Coleman dual-fuel burner stove was taken out of the box and (following careful reading of instructions- it runs on petrol!) was soon cooking up our first outdoor cuisine. Despite being limited to just 2 boxes our kitchen has pretty much everything; including the kitchen sink (collapsible, of course).We were keen to see how long our ‘house battery’ would last before needing a re-charge; impressively, for the 3 days we were there our fridge ran constantly at 3⁰C, we charged laptop and camera batteries, and had lights underneath the awning and in the rooftent at night (with 25% power remaining when we left!). Our ‘2 second cabin’ lived up to its name when bursting out of the bag (mastering the art of folding it back in took slightly longer). This lightweight, compact 1m x 1m tent is ideal for use as a shower, washroom, toilet or changing tent. The adventure Hammock had its first ‘stringing-up’... following this our productivity noticeably decreased; nothing is more relaxing than swinging gently in the dappled sunshine with a warm breeze and only background bird song. We can’t wait for some of the shine on our new equipment to be replaced with dust and mud but in the meantime it’s reassuring to know that we’re well prepared for the journey ahead. Emma Although in this day and age we are just as likely to get mugged in London as we are in Lima, the fact is we’ll be travelling through some desperately poor countries where our appearance alone will present us as wealthy, affluent foreigners (despite us probably looking more effluent than affluent). We’ve prepared ourselves as well as we can in terms of security of our possessions but our personal safety is also a prime consideration. Avoidance is always key; don’t wander in dodgy parts of towns and cities alone late at night, don’t display valuables, be careful at ATM machines etc.
However, even with preventative measures in place, there is still a risk there that can’t be ignored and to help us be prepared for this extreme scenario we enlisted the help of Trevor Leech and Sean Murphy of Jujitsu Guernsey. Trevor and Sean are a 5th and 4th Dan respectively, with over 55 year’s joint experience in Jujitsu, a Japanese art of weapon less fighting. They are affiliated with the United Martial Arts International Guild and World Budo Kai. With limited time, they taught us the fundamental basics of responding to a personal attack. The focus was on breaking free from the hold of an assailant to allow us to run away fast from any potentially threatening situation. They taught us that an attacker never expects their victim to react in a fast, targeted manner so with this element of surprise you are already altering the balance of control. Self defence is about moving in such a way that makes it difficult for an attacker to maintain their grip or hold on you, in addition to possibly striking a sensitive part of their body. No matter what the size or strength of an aggressor, you can cause sudden pain by striking their nose, eyes or groin. If grabbed from behind, a sharp slide down the shin with your heel in addition to stamping on their foot will cause enough pain for them to loosen or release their hold on you, providing an opportunity for escape. Even if pinned down on the ground with your hands held tight either side of your head, a fast ‘snow angel’ downwards movement of your arms shifts the assailant’s centre of balance forwards allowing you to knee them forwards and momentarily incapacitate them. Although the focus is not on fighting, we did practice punching effectively (ie not like a girl with your thumb inside your fist). We were both told we pack a mean punch! We are enormously grateful to Trevor and Sean who freely gave their time to demonstrate and educate us in some basic self-defence. We plan to practice these techniques regularly so the response becomes second nature. The bottom line is that is someone wants your wallet or your camera and they're pointing a gun or a knife at you, you give it to them. No question. This knowledge is absolutely for the worst case scenario but should it arise we will be equipped with the vital skills. If the ‘bear hug’ from behind is from an actual bear let’s hope the same moves apply! Emma Sir Ranulph Fiennes is commonly recognised as “the world’s greatest living explorer”. A title awarded to him by The Guinness Book of Records back in 1984, since then he has broken many more world records and led many more expeditions to remote regions. He is the only man alive EVER to have travelled around the Earth's circumpolar surface (more people have been to the Moon). In 2003, only a few months after a massive heart attack, 3-day coma and double bypass, Ranulph Fiennes (with Mike Stroud) achieved the first 7x7x7 (seven marathons in seven consecutive days on all seven continents)… And, if that wasn’t enough his expeditions have raised over £14 million for UK charities.
The above-mentioned feats are just the tip of the iceberg, please visit his website and learn more about this incredibly inspirational man. It is an honour to be able to print such a gratifying quote from someone so astounding; Emma and I can only strive to be as awesome as he is. Thank you Sir Ranulph http://www.ranulphfiennes.co.uk/ The car modifications are coming on great and Bee-Bee is really starting to look like she’s ready to drive around the world. One area that is problematic with the Hilux Surf is the fact that it doesn’t have any roof gutters or rails thus making it challenging to fix any kind of roof rack onto the vehicle. Once I had pulled the roof lining out we had a better idea of how we were going to solve the problem. Initially we had plans for a grand full length overlanding safari style roof rock, the plans of which you can see below. I took the plans to several local metal workshops and waited patiently for them to get back to me with quotes. Like many companies we’ve encountered most didn’t bother to reply at all and some needed serious chasing whilst one or two came through with the goods straight away. The quotes for the rack varied ridiculously from £600 right up to £2900. Unfortunately the company who quoted £600 could not carry the work out for another month. It was at this point that we decided to take a new approach to our problem and contacted Norman Logic. We decided that we’d go with a more simple approach to fixing our roof tent to Bee-Bee. Matt Norman suggested we made up two simple roof bars that would be fixed directly through the roof into the internal cross members of the vehicle. The roof bars would also be joined together in the middle with one cross brace to offer rigidity and to stop any twisting that might happen. The base plates have a threaded bar that fits through the roof and is bolted up from underneath. This new approach meant that we’d save a fair amount of weight on materials but would lose some valuable storage space. We wanted the tent to sit as low as possible so that the vehicle isn’t too top heavy; Matt carried out some complex measuring and a couple of days later we had a rack on Bee-Bee. The bars fit perfectly and Matt did a grand job of making sure everything is water tight. The roof doesn't flex at all with the rack and tent in place and loaded with two fully grown adventurers. The rack also has brackets on either side allowing us to switch which side of the car we place the awning. The brackets also act as security stoppers in case the tent comes loose and slides sideways on the roof bars. Overall Matt Norman at Norman Logic did an amazing job, the welding is nice and neat and the whole project was well thought out and executed perfectly. We can't thank and recommend him enough.
Andy |
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