Miles driven: 150 miles
Time in car: 3.5 hours
Borders crossed: 0
Supplies are gathered. Mike has arrived. Fleetwood Yak’s Mongol Rally is upon us. At around 3 PM on Thursday afternoon, we loaded up and headed out from Oxford to Dover. A lot went into this first drive, let’s revisit how we got here.
Landing in London on Monday morning, Tanner and Joe’s first move was to pick up the vehicle. You may remember we purchased Stevie, our 2004 Skoda Fabia, sight unseen from a used car dealership near Heathrow. About 2 weeks leading up to Tanner’s and Joe’s departure, we had found out that Hampshire Motorhouse’s website no longer existed. Gone. Vanished from the internet. This was concerning. We called the phone number of the dealership and our dealer, Rana, said that the car was safe and sound but being held much further away than the original dealership. That was a relief. Once Tanner and Joe landed, they Ubered 45 min to the new spot only to find out the car wasn’t there. We called Rana and he said he could deliver the car to our Heathrow hotel later that night. While it was good to know we’d still be getting our car, it’s difficult to supply shop without a vehicle. Still Tanner and Joe gathered what they could before calling it a night. A somewhat successful first day - we had the car. Stevie however, had some issues - broken AC, brake pads worn to the bone, tires on their last treads, no central locking. I guess you get what you pay for when you buy a used, sight unseen 2004 Czech hatchback - junk.
Luckily, we had a mechanical makeover scheduled at an Oxford garage on Tuesday morning. Bad news - the brakes as expected were shot and that was going to cost us. Good news - the shocks were in top shape. Not sure that will be the case after we get through the -Stan’s, but it definitely saved our wallet a bit and gave us some peace of mind. With our new brakes installed, we were feeling good about our progress until we learned that our Skoda roof rails couldn’t be delivered until Thursday - the day we had to leave for Dover. That sucked because we still had all of our gear stored in our hotel room. With more and more supplies piling up there, our once clean Marriott room was looking more like a hoarder’s basement. We badly needed to get our Yakima cargo box mounted, but with no roof rails, packing our car was at a standstill.
Wednesday arrived and so did Mike. After a bit of supply shopping, Joe and Tanner rendezvoused with Mike at the hotel before meeting up with a fellow rallier, Freddie, who graciously allowed us to register our charity vehicle to his Oxford address. As a sign of gratitude, we gifted him with some Chicago goodies - a few cans of local IPA and a fifth of Chicago’s best, Malört. Cheers, Freddie. After downing a few pints at The Cape of Good Hope in Oxford to talk with Freddie about Rally things, we packed in early as we knew Thursday was going to be crucial - new tires, AC repair, pack entire car and make it to Dover. A tall order no doubt. However, after hearing about Freddie and their team Bear Bone’s current status of their 2005 Skoda Fabia (mainly the whole part about it not running) we did feel a bit better about our car.
Freddie - a theoretical mathematics PhD student at Oxford and the first other rallier we have met.
Thursday came early and quickly. An 8:30 AM fitting earned us 4 new tires for our Skoda. While they didn’t have the high capacity tires, we couldn’t delay any further so the normal type would have to do. Then we bolted over to another mechanic to check up on our AC. Thankfully it just needed a re-gas and was ready in under an hour. Just after lunch, we had picked up our roof rails for our car after they finally arrived in store and then sped over to the hotel to build our Yakima storage box. After 3 hours of construction, packing, and configuration, the car was packed. Doing this we learned 3 things: 1) We couldn’t do this without Rack Attack and our Yakima Off Grid they gave us; 2) all of our gear can fit in and on our car; 3) our car is VERY heavy when full, like riding real low. That means we needed to cut weight, but that had to wait as daylight was waning and London rush hour traffic was not accounted for in today’s schedule. So at 3 PM we set of and a few hours later after Joe and Tanner had successfully steered Stevie into Dover, we had arrived at our campsite.
Stevie in all her glory at the Kingsdown campsite.
Kingsdown Campground was a beautiful site - a large green pasture with views of the ocean and the White Cliffs of Dover. We took about 30 minutes to take in the serenity of the scene and checked out the beach leading down from the campsite. Then, it was back to business of cutting weight on our car. It’s difficult to ditch things you think you need but aren’t mission critical, but every pound counts and I think our suspension agrees with that. We still haven’t figured out how to remove our factory radio for our iPhone compatible radio, so we’re still stuck with local radio at this point. Hopefully we can fix that soon and until then our a plethora of Spotify playlists and audio books will have to wait. As for tomorrow: a ferry to Calais, stopping at Dunkirk before driving through to Brussels for what already feels like some much needed R&R. That’s a concerning statement as well. Hopefully, Brussels brings a few more car fixes, some waffles, and world class beers. Until next time - FWY