A Pug, a spade and a stove… the journey begins

Well here’s the news for the week. After endless searching and panic we have (subject to viewing and exchanging money and handshakes) found a car for the rally. Last weekend I searched the Friday-ad website and found a Left Hand Drive Peugeot 205 available for £195 ‘cheap as chips’ I said to myself in a David Dickinson manner. Instead of contacting the guys about it, who (I probably shouldn’t say, but) have been really rubbish for the past couple of weeks, I decided to begin making enquiries and sent an email for further information.

Next day an email is received from the seller and some pictures of a white Pug 205 in immaculate condition and a rather funny email about the owner’s Left hand driving, French wife. Fairly impressed and eager to view the car I contacted the others by email and text to make sure they saw it. I immediately get a call back from Luke (who had just returned from an RAF training week – I let him off for the slack communication) and had a catch up chat. Next day on my home from work I get a call from Luke ‘we got a car!’, ‘what car?’ I said. Luke decided to call the bloke from the pug 205 advert for a chat and ‘bam’ they reached an agreement there and then. Pickup is this weekend with the team convoying up to Norwich to collect it. The sod closed the deal without me, but hey he knew I was keen on it anyway.

…. Later that evening I also managed to test out the ex-army mentholated spirit stove. Unfortunately there were no instructions included (Macho army soldiers and instructions? Nah! I can’t imagine it), so after a bit of confusion I eventually managed to get it going. It took approx 7mins to boil a mug of water and when I tried to extinguish the dam thing I couldn’t blow it out. I assume a wet cloth prepared before hand would be best in future. I will become a camper and get my scout badges one day.

Road to nowhere

Two weeks before departure and there is still no vehicle. Things are looking pretty bleak for my travels. I had a pretty productive weekend though. I found a suitable Ford Escort on Ebay and promptly began to bid for it with £500 my limit. With 2minutes left I was winning with a measly £255 but expected all the last minute people to jump in and beat me by a couple of quid. So I waited. 1 minute to go the bid goes up to £350 I bid again at £400, the bid rises to £425, I bid £450, the bid rises again to £500, I bid £510 with 4 seconds to go thinking I must have won with such little time left. As it turns out the other chap managed to slip in a higher bid of £520 to win it…..another car escapes.

It was also my last chance to see my parents before departure this weekend (they still don’t know that I’m going, I told them I am package holiday-ing it in Morocco) so we went back down south to Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (The local 'cool kids' call it LA nowadays. It just makes it easier to identify the illiterate school dropouts, when they hang around town with nothing to do but act 'cool'. "yea me geeza, im from LA guv!"). On my visit I remembered an old army surplus store I went to once, near Bognor, I drove over and to my joy found many of the items i've been looking for. Jerri cans, ex-army camping equipment, ex-Swiss army (trangia style) stove, ex-army canvas rucksack and desert boots all for bargain prices. Heloise even managed to pick up a cool camo bag and a canvas tool bag.

The ambulance and a spade?

The pictures of the ambulance arrived from Mikey B and indeed as claimed by the council it had taken a beating! On the good news I managed to find an army surplus store in ‘Angel’ north London called ‘Hard Wear’ (for those of you who know what the ‘Blue Oyster bar’ is you will know the kind of people who run that place) where I managed to buy some very important equipment an Ex-army folding shovel and a mosquito net! So at the moment it appears that I will be crossing the Sahara on foot with a shovel, a sleeping bag and a mosquito net…..

Bad news always come in threes

Bad news always come in threes I’ve been told. Firstly was Mikey B’s decision to leave the team, and then, last week was the sad departure of the life of our newly purchased ambulance whose life destiny should have been to serve the poor and needy in The Gambia. Unfortunately England has too many young people with nothing better to do than to destroy other people’s property. The ambulance was parked round the back of my friends house on the street whilst the paperwork, MoT and insurance was being arranged. Returning home one day my friend found the ambulance to be missing! After calling the police, the council and the car pound, no one had any record of it. A couple of days passed, an email arrived from the car pound claiming the ‘abandoned and vandalised(apparently they found all the windows smashed and have pictures as proof we await to see.)’ vehicle had been towed away by then and crushed! Currently we are left without much choice but to accept what happened as technically, without an Mot and road tax they have every right to remove and destroy it. What will be the third I wonder?

New Flash

I have good news to report, those who I have been in contact with recently may have heard my dilemma about my planned trip to The Gambia.

Around this time last year a group on my old university friends decided one night to apply for a voluntary charity rally from the shores of Plymouth to Banjul in Gambia.
Months passed without word until on day an email arrived, confirming the acceptance of the rally. The rally consists of about hundred-odd people from England buying any cheap budget left hand drive cars driving overland through the countries of France, Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal to The Gambia, where all the cars will be auctioned for charity. (Check out www.plymouth-banjul.co.uk for more info)

At this point there was no opportunity to involve myself in the team as the recommended size of a team was 2 and they already had 4. However I offered my limited knowledge and support and claimed a position as a sub in case anyone decided to opt out! …… you can guess how this fairytale is going to …. Begin…. Around September Sam decided for personal reasons he could not make the trip and therefore I jumped into a ‘ready made’ team. Car already purchased and plans being formulated. My plan initially was to quit my work just before the start so I could fund my journey but reaching the end of December 2005 I found that I was beginning to progress through work and was a little torn on whether or not to leave.

Then came new years and January my deadline was to decided and hand in my resignation one month before we were due to leave on the 9th Feb. Bad news struck us early, Mikey B decided to also abandon the rally due to personal reasons, and the remaining two of the group decided new of my tough decision. Deciding my options I decided to attempt proposing the volunteering trip to my manager on my first week back from Xmas and arrange my time as annual leave, I had no response and my last chance resign was approaching. Alas, the weekend before 9th Jan, no word form my manager, I reluctantly decide to stay at my work and also abandon the team.

Two days later however, my manager calls me over for a chat, “yes we can arrange your time off, but you must show commitment to work…sfsjdfthfa…..” (I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, that was all I wanted to know!)

A Distant Memory

It has it already been almost a week since my last entry?! Japan is alreadly fading in my memory! Amazing what a week back at work can do to you!

My good intentions of detailing my full journey is already at a loss.

… lets recap, next stop was Kawaguchi-Ko, at Mt Fuji

We arrived after dark having already missed the last bus transfer to the hotel I booked earlier in the evening.

(I remember my girlfriend commending me on being able to book a hotel at such short notice, all whilst speaking Japanese. Lets see if I were to recall exactly what I said, the conversation went something like this:

Me: Moshi moshi (Hello)
Hotel: Moshi moshi (Hello)
Me: eigo ka wakarimasu? (Do you speak English?)
Hotel: fjsldkfjjffds (???)
Me: Erm….Wakarimasen (Erm…I don’t understand)
Hotel: A little
Me: Ichi Room Konban kudasai? (one room tonight please?)
Hotel: how many people?
Me: Ni
Hotel: Name?
Me: Fri Wan
Hotel: Thank-you you room is book for this evening. Check-in is 5.30pm, last transfer from the train station is at 5.00pm
Me: Thank-you, Arigato. (Thank-you, Thank-you)

Anyway I digress. We were given a room with a view of Mt Fuji and the plan was to wake up early to see it through our window. Next morning as we opened the window…. Nothing but Snow and mist, disappointed we get up a slowly get dressed ready for our morning Onsen (Japanese bath).

About the Onsen. Japanese baths are intended for people to sit and relax in. the idea is that you shower and clean yourself first and then jump in butt naked with numerous strangers into an extremely hot bath and relax. At this particular hotel, there are two Onsen’s per sex an outdoor and an indoor. During the previous night I attempted to jump into the outdoor one but was put off by, what appeared to be a sausage fest with some ‘chav’ sounding Japanese guys. This time whilst showering indoors, I noticed through the window, the mist clearing off Mt Fuji I jumped outside ran through the snow and jumped into the steaming hot bath in time to see Mt Fuji in its full beauty. And for half an hour it was just myself in a hot bath surrounded by snow and mount Fuji staring back at me.

Welcome 2006, Welcome The Post-Holiday Blues

After a whirlwind two week visit to Japan I return home to England feeling rather exhausted and rather disappointed to be back in England and at work.

Here’s a brief low-down about my trip. Landing at Narita airport on the 19 December, we managed through a painstaking process and broken Japanese and English to obtain our all important Japan Rail (JR) passes, our ticket to travel throughout Japan.

We spent four days in Tokyo in a hotel called the New Koyo, a cheap and un-cheerful place. We pre-booked four nights here prior to our departure in a “Japanese style room”. You have to be there to get a real feel of the place. You can’t complain due the princely sum of £12 per night however, but the ‘double’ room was literally 6x7ft and fitted with Japanese Tatami mats on the floor instead of a bed to give that authentic Japanese feel.

One of my highlights of the four day’s, was a day trip to see some temples in a town called Nikko. It was snowing heavily with a vicious wind that gave an Antarctic blizzard feel. We caught a taxi 400 metres with an American traveller we met at the train station. We couldn’t bear the thought of walking in the cold conditions to the temple, but then reluctantly got thrown out of the taxi in the snow after our short 3min drive. I did have the benefit of wearing gloves, but they were fingerless gloves, the type that you see hobo’s wearing in the films (imagine the regret I had when I realised how cold it was). I think that this would have been sufficient to keep me warm enough though until I decided that I wanted to offer a prayer at a temple. This required me to cleanse myself from a beautiful stone carved water feature, off came the gloves to wash my hands with ice cold water. Then to top this off I realised that we had to take off our shoes to enter the temple, and felt compelled to give a monetary donation for the privilege of risking my limbs to frostbite. However complaining aside the blanket of snow around us and on the temple roof top created an absolutely beautiful scene which I imagine I will hold in my memory for some time.

Emperors Palace in Tokyo is only open two days a year. We happened to be in Tokyo for his birthday so we decided to walk around the grounds – a total let-down. I recommend going to the Imperial Palace in Kyoto instead. In the main building they have this purpose built squeaky floorboards to notify the emperors’ guards of any intruders. I was walking around in my socks ninja style trying to avoid making noise…. I would have been slaughtered.

Next stop was Kawaguchi-ko, at the foot of Mt Fuji