Hello people! I’m back by popular demand… I hope you’ve all enjoyed a fantastic Christmas and are planning for an amazing up coming year. I’m here to recount our epic Australian leg for any of you that might have missed the many hilarious and highly entertaining blog posts from the crew.
It’s been over a month now since I’ve returned from duty, but it feels more like a lifetime ago since I first stepped on to Australian soil. Stepping off the plane, the heat and humidity hitting me like a slap in the face, I instantly forgot the 23 hours spent in transit.
Perth turned out to be more than just a starting point for our Australian leg, it almost became the end of the whole trip. The quarantine officials were rather unimpressed with the clean up job done on Martha before she boarded the ship and were threatening 3 weeks in jail (quarantine jail that is). Steve quickly got his persuasive hat on and got chatting to the guys at Luckens. Low and behold quicker than you can say “Bonza mate” we were pushed to the front of the queue, free of charge of course, and were due out of quarantine in 3 days. The first of many amazingly generous offers of help and assistance we got from the people of Australia.
Stage 4 seems like a million miles away now, having just stuffed myself silly at various Christmas/New Year celebrations. Feel a little sad writing this now I am about to embark on my first day back at the office for 2011 but here goes my overview of the best month of my life so far…
The stage started back on a very rainy night in October when Lyndsey, Seve and I were united at Heathrow, all very excited and eager to embark on the journey ahead. After 18 hours and a quick pitstop in Bangkok to sample the sights and sounds of a very busy Khao San road, and the tastiest Pad Thai I have ever eaten, we touched down at Luang Prabang airport. My first impression on landing at the airport was one of pure admiration of the beautiful landscape Laos had to offer, and then secondly I was overcome by giggles at seeing ‘plane spotter Steve’ in the bushes of the airport trying to get a snap of us getting off the plane. The first few days on the trip were relatively easy as the boys of stage 3 needed a well earned break before we headed off on the road. While definitely not the longest of the stages in terms of distance and duration it did have 3 borders which we were more than a little concerned about crossing. We needn’t have worried though. The team at Global link, KPP and the Singapore Civil Defence service did a sterling job of hand-holding us on our crossings through these notoriously busy and difficult borders.
A look back at FTFE’s smashing and cracking 24 days in China
With well over a year of research and hard graft behind it, we had always thought that of all the borders we are crossing, the Mongolian/China border was the “big one”.
In order to comply with Chinese regulations and to ensure we could successfully enter China with Martha we hired a company called NAVO. To comply with the regulations it meant having a guide with us for the entire time and NAVO selected Sun Ji for this task. It was Day 54 and Sun Ji was there to meet us at the border. As he joined we had already been surrounded by some very interested Chinese border police who Ailsa was impressing with her Chinese.
Sun Ji had been at the border for a couple of days finalising the paperwork which had started a year ago. After a spot of fun with the customs officials, we were through in no time at all. We were so incredibly shocked, relieved and confused that the crossing was met with complete silence as opposed to the usual hysteria. There was still further official paperwork to complete, but essentially, we had successfully rolled into China. The first foreign fire engine ever to do so. Another first chalked up for FTFE.
There had been quite a lot of press coverage about how bad the traffic had been around Beijing with tales of a huge traffic jam and people being stuck in their vehicles for over nine days. We came across three lanes of traffic about 250km out, and when I say traffic I actually mean thousands and thousands of trucks. Sun Ji suggested we take to the hard shoulder and try and squeeze past some of the worst of it. With sirens blazing Martha seemed to develop her own personality and nothing was going to stop her, or get in her way. She pushed, nudged, bullied, and cajoled her way through over a 100km and we were tired and exhausted when we rolled into Beijing at 3am. Read more →
It all began on the 31st July with the passing of the baton (in our case truck keys) in Moscow’s Red square as the new stage 2 crew of Dave Orders, Ben Haselett and myself surprised the stage 1 crew after their mammoth over night drive from the Latvian border!
It’s been almost 4 months since stage 2 finished yet my memories of it are still as fresh as ever. Of all the countries I have visited in the past 6 months Mongolia has been my favourite. With Russia definitely being the most surprising! In order to sum up stage 2 quickly I thought I would list my highs and lows from each country
Russia
The highs;
1. Being waved on and saluted by most Police patrols, and when we were actually stopped we were sent on our way with a smile and a good luck message!!
2. The friendliness and help we received from normal Russians without whom we would never have found our way out of some towns or found a bed to sleep in.
3. Sleeping in a dormitory with 50 Russian girls after sitting in a traffic jam for 4 hours in Nishny Novgorod.
4. The official photographs of a Russian wedding being taken on Martha.
5. The sheer beauty of Russian Siberia with its stunning Mountains, Forests and Glacial Rivers! Read more →
On the eve of the FTFE’s voyage from New Zealand to North America, Squadron Leader Steve has asked me to provide a few lines of reminiscence about the now dim and distant memory of Stage One of the Follow That Fire Engine Challenge. Rather than providing yet another blow-by-blow account of the London to Moscow trajectory (those who are interested can take at the daily blogs on the interactive map below, updated regularly by yours truly folks!), I will give a few of my own personal reflections on that first leg of this journey of lifetime.
Some thoughts:
Thought # 1: Despite being the first, FTFE Stage One was the hardest yet.
This may not be a popular view among the other FTFE team members (Ben B, Ross Chris and Steve aside), but I would like to take this opportunity to assert that, having followed each and every daily update from the subsequent stages, the London to Moscow leg most definitely provided some of the sternest challenges that Martha et al have faced – and I am not including the unfortunate 36 hours at the Russian border in this assessment.
A common complaint of our initial FTFE followers when reading the first in this series of blogs was that we didn’t seem to be enjoying ourselves very much at the beginning. This is not strictly true… as I will explain shortly…. but Stage One was certainly a short sharp shock to the system. Not for us the widescreen landscape and sense of freedom that the chaps experienced in, let’s say, Mongolia. Europe, with its concentration of populations and cultures left us disorientated as each day provided a fresh linguistic, dietary and cultural challenge. Add to this the self-imposed requirement to cross as something like 15 borders in our 12-day stint (Slovenia being the least pleasant – an 8 km crawl through a badly ventilated single lane road tunnel), the daily unknown of finding accommodation in the middle of high tourist season, and the somewhat optimistic route plan, which meant that every day consisted of more than 12 hours behind the wheel. Not for us the carefree visits to the local zoos or extreme sport attractions, the pleasant strolls around local beauty spots or the laid-back barbecues with friendly locals. Want to know what Stage One’s only gesture to tourism was? That’s right amigos, we visited a concentration camp… Nothing against that you understand – visiting Auschwitz was a chillingly unforgettable experience – but it does help to demonstrate that FTFE Stage One was arguably shorter on fun and games than subsequent easy-life legs! Alright, I am being deliberately provocative here, but I believe that Team Leader Steve will back me up in this argument… right Stevie??
