Hello everyone,

We have just started to get the website going, so not sure what is quite happening as everything is getting so real.

We have also got the charities page working! (sooo happy, took way to long!!) so if you would like to donate some money to our charity that would be a great help, thank you.

The Tumbling Dice

First Drive

We have just completed the first leg of our journey. However, this is before the Rally officially starts. Having bought Lady Tallulah in the beautiful setting of North Yorkshire, the first challenge was to get her down to London. This was a smooth journey with no hiccups. However, the warning light for the radiator came on about 10 mins before we arrived in Vauxhall at Hugo's flat. A little warning and reminder that our radiator isn't the strongest part of the vehicle and should be kept an eye on regularly. This could be more of an omen than we first thought... we shall see.

We officially leave from Goodwood motor circuit on Saturday with the official launch known as the Festival of Slow. Any of you who would like to see us off please feel free to come down. It's free to come to the launch and there is free parking there as well.

 We shall keep you all regularly updated.

 Tumbling Dice

Special

Hey everyone,

We have had a special few days recently. First Ed started off well with filling up the radiator with water, which was fine. However he did not but the cap back on.. So after driving about four miles, at some traffic lights someone came up to him and told him that there was water running out of the engine. So Ed pulls over and checks the engine to see that there is water pouring out of the radiator and there is no cap. Ed rings me to tell me what is happening and i went out side to where the car was parked to see if the cap was still there. Luckily it was!! so i then got the tube down to ed and gave him the cap, before putting it on we had to put 2 liters of water in the car as she was thirsty..

As for Hugo, he has failed to get an international driving permit. He went to the post office yesterday to get one but because he has an irish driving license, this was not possible. After speaking to representatives in ireland, he effentually got through to the AA and they said if they got to Basingstoke with certain documents he could get one. This was at 3.45 on a friday afternoon. Hugo missed his train to basingstoke and got on another which was too late. So no international driving permit. But we'll get round it somehow...

 Anyway, we leave today so next update will be from the Continent!!

Tumbling Dice x

March to Czechout

So we are finally on our way to Mongolia. The Festival of Slow was awesome and we left by doing a circuit of Goodwood Motor Circuit. For those of you who have seen my Facebook profile piccy, we were right on the start line. (However, we weren't the first to leave. everyone left in stints, the first of which was 55 ambulances!!).

Yet our journey has not been without incident. We stopped on the way to Dover at which point water gushed out of our engine. Again it was the radiaor - the bane of our lives! again it was because the cap was not screwed on tightly enough. but its been sorted and we got to france with no further problems.

we spent the night in Brugges mainly because we watched the film the night before we left and wanted to go up the clock tower, which we did yesterday morning before setting off to Erlangen,  a small town just north of nuremburg to stay with my housemate from uni, Ryan Cleary. Brugges to Erlangen is about 450 miles which we did on one tank of petrol. quite good news considering the vast distances we need to cover.

today we are heading to a 13th century caste called klenova, which is south west of prague for the czechout party. this will be awesome. the adventurists are providing hendricks gin on the house...

Tumbling Dice x

End of Good Roads

Since our last blog we have had some incidents!

having left ryan in erlangen with two of the best sandwiches in the world, we embarked onto Czech Republic for the Czechout party. we arrived at the campsite and there were already a lot of teams there. there were some interesting cars as well. a team called  twats in tweed had a bbq attached to the back of their green vehicle. there was a very old yellow mini whom we followed in torrential rain, which struggled to drive straight with all the water, and another team with a stags head attached to the back of their vehicle. 

 one team unfortunately did not make it because half an hour outside goodwood, they were crashed into by another douche bag of a driver and their car was written off. pretty gutting!! 

the party itself was insane!! the venue was a 13th century castle.  dressed in stupid clothes we got free hendricks gin inside. hugo doesn't like gin so i happily helped myself to his! in the castle there was live music and they used the ruins for different activities. there was a cinema cave, a rave cave with drum n bass and a shisha cave. we endulged in the whole lot. 

the next morning was a struggle and hugo took on the burden of driving to prague. one of the most beautiful cities in the world. we wandered round for the afternoon and did all the touristy things and then headed north on the journey to tallinn, estonia. THIS IS WHEN THE PROBLEMS STARTED!

attempting to leave prague, we got stuck in a traffic jam in the centre. so lady tallulah thought it was a convenient place to overheat and spray the contents of her radiator all over the street. we pulled her up onto the pavement and while we waited for her to cool down, hugo played the role of traffic warden. but not to worry, we got her on her way again and managed to get to the czech polish border with no further problems.

next problem was warsaw when again we got stuck in traffic and again lady tallulah decided to overheat. this time we were prepared and pulled over before steam started coming out the engine and before water and anti freeze deposited itself on the road. however, this was when we realised that the fan, which is meant to cool the engine down at slow speeds, was not working! big problem! so we pulled over and waited for her to cool down completely and added some genius stuff called wetter wetter which cools the engine down by 10 to 15 degrees. thank god this did the job but we still had the issue of a broken fan.

 we reached tallinn, via riga, capital city of latvia for lunch, in a day which was about 600 miles.  the next day,  we were enjoying a picnic lunch on the coast when we came across an estonian, called Tanel, and a belgian, called Leo, who were interested in our mongol rally logos. it just so happened that both spoke english and Tanel was a mechanic. we told him of our problem and he offered to fix them...FOR FREEE! we hit the jackpot. in an hour we were back to normal and raring to go.

 so now we are relaxing in tallinn, having had our first shower since germany, the second night, now with a little bit more confidence that we will make it to mongolia.  

Tumbling Dice x