Shots from the Road

Not got tıme to upload loads of pıcs but here are a few...! Wıll hopefully get tıme ın Baku to wrıte another proper blog entry. All ıs good here.

Daveş Advaıtş Mattş Nıck & Sly

Czech Out party 100kms from Prague

Macedonıan Border crossıng

Monastery ın a Serbıan Enclave wıth Scottısh.

Turkısh traffıc jams.

The First Leg!

After an uneventful stint through the chunnel, we emerged in France with the intention of putting some pedal to the metal till we reached Amsterdam. Sadly not having maps with a small enough scale to navigate through towns and cities meant we circled the 'King Leopold II tunnels' in Brussels some four hundred times. This wasted a good couple of hours and so we finally launched into Amsterdam around 2am. We waltzed into town with the hope of finding some action, but all we managed was a few glimpses of the red light district, a couple of beers and got soaked. Poor effort! Driving is more tiring than we thought. As there were only the three of us, rather than lugging our tents into the campsite, we just kipped in the 3* luxury that is Dougie. An interesting move when the next morning Advait tried to sneak into the campsite for a cheeky shower, was rejected big style and 10 minutes later we had the dutch rozzers knocking on our window. Some swallowed toothpaste aside, it was a surprisingly amiable encounter with the 'good cop' expressing a fair bit of interest in the rally, and the 'bad cop' taking our passports away for a brief going over. Nothing too stressful, and we did what we were told and hit the road with the mission to get to somewhere near Prague.

The drive to Prague was going smoothly until we learned that Matty was arriving a full day before everyone else thought he was. Ah well, that's coordination for you. We left the oblivious Matty with the task of finding us a suitable hostel, and lit the afterburners. A few hours later, we had a Matty, a parking spot, a bed and were chowing down on some Maccy D's. Was almost like we'd planned it. We left in the morning with a quick detour to the local Tesco before envisaging a quick twenty minute drive to the outskirts of Prague for the official 'Czech out' party. Imagine our surprise when we found out that it was actually a full two and a half hour drive away in a non-descript 14th century village. This meant we had a quick turnaround in way of putting up our tents on arrival into the campsite before heading to the castle which was the venue for the night. The theme was 'the age of exploration', so we went dressed in our scrubs, naturally.

The party itself was surreally good. Imagine the scene; hundreds of people in fancy dress eating barbecued food in and amongst the ruins of Klenova castle. After queueing for a few pieces of miscellaneous meat, we sat down at the picnic tables next to a group dressed as the Knights of the Templar. The head knight was clearly disgruntled, muttering something about it not being a bad meal for £650 (our entry fee to the rally). The evening went much further south after that, with a free Hendrick's gin bar not aiding our efforts to stay disciplined.
After having drunken banter with a South African wearing a kilt (don't ask), drinking until speaking became difficult, and setting Matt on fire, we bedded down for the night. Fortunately, when morning came around we were buoyed by the fact that it was clear the free Hendrick's gin had punished others more than ourselves. One guy was lying unconscious by a fire with a dog licking his face, and a bunch of mischievous Durham grads (!) throwing balls at him. Once we'd stomached the last of the potato grule that was on offer, we hit the road with Nick having the unenviable task of driving first off, with a head that felt like someone was trying to park a truck in there.

We intended to drive for the day, and camp somewhere over the Serbian border but then a unanimous decision was reached whereby we thought it'd be a better idea to reach Kosovo as soon as possible to allow for more downtime with Scottish George. This meant an all night drive, a feat which was made all the harder when we did a few unecessary laps of Budapest. The ensuing cyclical driving was pretty draining, with driver and navigator in the front and the two non-drivers in the back trying to sleep as they bounced off the walls and ceiling.
Driving though the Serbian and Kosovan borders in the early hours of the morning could be descibed as slighty spooky or by lesser men as shit scary. To be honest it was fairly uneventful but on around five hours of poor quality sleep in the last 48 hours our imaginations were running wild and when the rear door of the ambulance gets flung open and you're faced with a gruff border guard who speaks no English, it's hard not to have sticky situations running through your mind. That's even without the snipers posted on the bridge. We eventually arrived at Scottish's at around mid day after a stunning drive through a misty sunrise and promptly passed out in his front room. 26 hours driving and we were shattered!

By the way, we now have a Sly, the team is complete and we're chilling with Scottish in Pristina. Rock on!

Ready, set, go!

Sly, Nick and Dave rocked up to the launch not quite knowing what to
expect, and were met by a paddock crammed with 300 rally cars, all
decked out and ready to roll. What a sight!

The dougie fan club were out in full force, having travelled from all
over the place, and were happy to fend off the hordes of inquisitive
folk eager to hear more about us and especially how we managed to
raise as much as we did. The three of us, kitted out in our surgical
and patient get ups (thanks lizzie!) took refuge on dougie's roof and
just soaked up the atmosphere with a bottle of champers from Beccy's
Dad! Sweet.

Being at Goodwood Motor Circuit, it'd have been criminal to leave
without doing a lap, and we were ushered to the front to join the fire
engine covered in fur, the thunderbird 4, a car with hammocks hanging
from the side, one with a full blown Viking canoe on top, an ice cream
van and more. We weaved our way round at 20mph hanging out the windows
past the few thousand people waving in the stands. Cracking stuff.

Sly had to leave us due to visa issues (amazingly not actually his
fault - the rally organisers properly messed his up - more on that
another time). He's going to get himself sorted and fly out to Kosovo
to meet us later this week. Matty is at his bro's wedding this weekend
and will be meeting us in Prague on Monday, and Nick and I are about
to pick Advait up from another wedding somewhere near the Chunnel....
Never straightforward!

That's it, we're outta here. Can't believe it's actually happening.
First stop, Amsterdam!!!!

Dave

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Dougie finds fame in The Indy

To perfectly coincide with the rally launch, our good pal Chris fixed
us up with a piece in The Independent! National news baby!

Head to page 17 of today's paper for a full run-down of the rally,
cheesy quotes from Dave and description of our charity, Helen &
Douglas House.

Cheers Chris, we're chuffed with it!

You can find the online version of the article here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mongolia-or-bust-the-appeal-of-the-mongol-rally-1751560.html?action=Popup&gallery=no

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£10,000+ raised for Douglas House!

Way back in 2008, before we managed to get hold of our trusty ambulance and most of us had worked out exactly where Mongolia was, someone thought we could use our trip as a way to raise a whole heap of cash for charity. After visiting Douglas House and deciding it was the one for us, we started talking about targets. To this day I'm not sure precisely where the figure of £10,000 came from. I remember someone pointing out that it's 'nice and round' and that it 'sounds big'. Which I guess is difficult to argue with. Anyway, the trip was a long way off and not worth worrying about right away. Trouble is, once we'd said we'd do it we kind of had to give it go.

It's been quite a journey since then; we've sent letters, baked cakes, been to Wales, shook tins, got sunburnt, been sick, been sick again, counted pennies, had photo shoots, worn hideous orange T-shirts, shouted at people in a tube station, been on the radio and in newspapers, sold our bodies, sold our boxer shorts and generally pestered lots of people in an effort to get to that all important target. To be honest for long periods of time we seriously doubted that we would ever make it. But we have and I think there is one simple reason that we did. We had an absolute shed load of help. The response we've had has been incredible, with people prepared to offer huge amounts of their time, patience, skills and money. You have made this a great success and having visited Douglas House we know it will make a big difference. So here goes with some extra special thanks for the following people who have put in effort beyond the call of duty into our fundraising, and getting us ready for this trip:

Mike at Red Stone, Jim & Neville at SCAS, Ruth at Douglas House, Beccy, Kerry, Milston, Harry, Maria, Lisa, Tom, Clare, Lara, Michelle, Greg, Philip and Helen Smith, Ash at Snowforum, Reza at Zeefax, P&H Decorating, Betty and Julian Holmes, Craig Wootton, Cathy Gaynor, the Bar, JCR and Chapel at St. Chad's College Durham, Hymers College, Radley College CCF, King's College School CCF, Old King's Club, Old Radleian Society, Daphne and Anna Holburn, Fortune, JT, Chris Green, Elaine, Hetty, Pat & Carol, Dave's family, Nick's family, Adele and papa Parsons, Comms dept at Uni of York, Adur School Nurse Team, Will & Dan at GPS Log, Dean Jones, Barbara Doyle, Advait's Mum, and Heather, Nigel and Jo Smith

Now we've just got to get to Mongolia....

Great CNCF News

Another very successful fundraiser for our Mongolian charity, CNCF, was held in the home of Carol Barrett in Beverley early in July. Lots of Carol’s friends, wine and canapés, a great deal of good will and appreciation of such a good cause raised £232.30 – so a huge thank you to Carol for an amazing effort!

We are thrilled to say that not only have we reached our total but we have well exceeded it by raising a fantastic £1560.43. To everyone who has donated: thank you so much. From the word go, back at Christmas, when Dave’s sisters and Mum organised the carol singing, this charity has captured the attention of many people – especially in Beverley, Dave’s home town. We are delighted to be supporting such a worthy cause and hope that our collection will make the lives of some of the poorest children in the world a little bit easier for a while, whether in the Christina Noble schools, mobile night clinic or in the Ger Village which we very much hope to visit when we reach Ulaan Baatar.

4 days to go!

Dave

Douglas Car get stuck in at London Pride!

Ok, so we weren't actually collecting at the Gay Pride festival, but it certainly livened up our day in the depths of Tottenham Court Road tube station. Together with some *serious* dedication from Kerry and Beccy, Dave, Matt, Nick and Sly tackled the hoards of people in the sweat box that is TCR and raised a brilliant £637.59 for Douglas House. Awesome stuff, and thanks so much girls, you really helped rake it in and keep the rest of us going. (Amazing how much difference a short skirt/shorts and a pretty face makes!)

We're now so close to our £10k target for Douglas House - it's really coming down to the wire. So if you haven't already, please make a donation at www.justgiving.com/thedouglascar. Every penny counts, and will help to make a difference to people who really need it.

2 weeks until we leave.

Can. Not. Wait!

Dave