Travel Tips

In June, I had to leave Russia for my visa. Due to my usual lack of forethought and planning, I didn't manage to get a return flight to the UK. I did my now-customary three-day journey via Tampere with RyanAir, a gruelling slog if there ever was one, and bought a car for the return journey. Yep, it worked out cheaper, especially as my best friend came with me on the trip and shared some of the costs.

And that's how I came to drive a fifteen-year-old eighties relic across six countries in three days. 3300km with only one proper overnight stop and lots of adventures along the way.

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The best way to ensure an eventful journey is as follows:

1) Choose a visibly knackered left hand drive car on eBay

2) Send your friend (who knows nothing about cars) to go and look at it and make an offer if he thinks it's fit for the trip.

3) Discover upon first sight that your new purchase might not make it to the end of the street, never mind the nearest garage.

4) Do the minimum repairs necessary (like installing a radiator- the original was all but non-existent)

5) Leave some really critical components (like the perforated, leaking rusty oil sump, the rattling clutch release bearing and the whining, grinding wheel bearings, and the engine with enough back pressure to go hot air ballooning) unchanged to add to the element of uncertainty.

6) Paint over the worst rust so that the scrap yards you visit don't immediately throw the car in the crusher.

And there you have it. The perfect way to make sure you get noticed on your journey. A super-cool, super-rusty Fiesta XR2, still with enough life in it to take corners like a go-kart and leave a lot of modern cars choking in rubber and oily exhaust smoke.

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Amazingly, we were only stopped once by police, and that was in Newcastle, right at the ferry terminal. There was no hassle, they were just a bit concerned as to how we had breached the space time continuum (the only way to get the flux capacitor going back in the 'eighties would have been to go over eighty miles per hour, a clear road traffic offence, and one well worth following up.)

However, they believed our story about being from the twenty-first century and had a good laugh at our mad plan to drive to Russia. Just as well we'd hidden the furry dice in the glove box, roight Rodney?

The real nightmare began when they left. The clattering sound from the clutch release bearing when we started up again made the hairs on my neck cower in fear.

From this point onwards we took every kilometre as a blessing and made no plans, except to go as far as we could in the car before donating it to a local farmer as a five star dog kennel. At least we could laugh at the fact we had the worst car for miles around.

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Incredibly, after an unbelievably rough ferry crossing (threw up from sea sickness for the first time in my life. Well, either from sea sickness or from the nauseating non-stop eighties muzakmelody in the bar, interrupted only by a nauseating Geordie elevator-music band... probably the only more obnoxious eighties article on the ferry was my car) still with me?! well, after the crossing, the car started and we drove off the ferry- amazing!

What was even more amazing was the lovely Dutch couple who guided us through the motorway maze and onto the main road to Berlin. And even more amazing was the fact that we survived the autobahn (despite intense rattling at anything over 100km/h) and even spotted one or two worse cars.

Actually, as we neared the Polish border, our little rustbucket seemed to fit in more and more. That didn't stop every second person who passed us from staring quizzically.

We made it across the Polish border and stopped in a car park to snooze until dawn.

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We crossed Poland more or less without event, and even managed to nip into Warsaw for a quick look around. I discovered that changing the odd-sized wheel nuts round resulted in a marked improvement on the vibration problem.

Just over the Lithuanian border, we were almost run off the road by an imbecile/homicidal truck driver who decided to try overtaking us uphill in the face of oncoming traffic. Halfway past he swung onto our side to avoid a head-on collision.

Fortunately for us there was no barrier on our side of the road, just a metre or so of dirt between the road's edge and the inky darkness. The car veered wildly as tyres scrabbled for purchase in the loose, uneven surface. Muck and stones clattered against the floor of the car, waking Jimmy from his catatonc slumber, "Huhhh...?"

But we made it. We decided to stop at the next service station and kip until dawn.

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Lithuania came and went in the blink of an eye. We were already confident in the car's ability and began to relax a little. Too much in fact. In Latvia, Jimmy (navigator) fell asleep after Riga and we ended up taking a detour through a forest, across miles and miles of muddy, slippery dirt tracks. Fun!

The Estonian border was the only place where they took the car documents away for proper inspection- nobody else gave a hoot. We stopped in Tallin for a proper night's rest in a hostel and in the morning trundled off towards Russia.

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Although we could have done the last leg without the stop in Tallinn, I thought my girlfriend would appreciate it when I arrived. Russian border crossed more or less without a hitch, despite driving down the wrong alne and almost crossing without showing passports or anything (the barrier was up, no-one told me to stop... they're used to people who cross every day and so know the rules!)

Found I only had JUST enough roubles to buy the minimum 15 day insurance at the border, had a good laugh with one of the senior guards, and we headed off for St. Petersburg.

At one of the two police stops along the way, we had a fun encounter with a very friendly traffic policeman who was curious as to why our number plates were different colours front and back.

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Incredible! We had made it all the way across Europe and lived to tell the tale. Pictures will be uploaded as soon as I've slept it off!

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