This message has just reached me by today:

"Poor old Marc came to grief in good old England.

Marc arrived in England to be waved through by customs and he went on his merry way. When he reached Wigan a cop stopped him because he had strange number plates (from NZ) and after quite a friendly conversation he wanted to know about Marc's insurance.

Well, Marc didn't have any insurance - didn't know he had to have it. He wasn't allowed to go and get the insurance and present it to the police. He got arrested, handcuffed, taken away in a paddy wagon, and spent the night in a cell. The next morning the magistrates decided they were going to disqualify him for driving for 3 months, fined him everything he had in his wallet, and impound Marc's Nissan.

To get the Nissan out, Marc had to insure the vehicle. However he was told he could not insure the vehicle because he had to have a valid license to be able to insure it. It also had to be insured by a UK resident. Then he found out if he didn't get it out within 7 days they would crush his dearly beloved vehicle.
As you can imagine this was not looking good, and Marc was struggling to find a way of getting his vehicle out before they crushed it. We all sent lots of ideas to Marc, but it was very complicated - whoever insured the vehicle had to show the insurance papers to the police - couldn't fax them or anything like that.

One chap went along to the police station but got told that he had to own the vehicle to insure it, and they weren't allowed to change the ownership while the vehicle was in police custody. Marc then found an Aussie (who drives for a living in England) and they decided that they would put this chap on the insurance as a driver of Marc's vehicle. They went to the police station to insure the vehicle, only to find out that this Aussie only had 1 part to his license and he was supposed to have 2 parts. If he got pulled up he would also get his vehicle impounded.

Most of the locals were too scared of the police to get involved. So Marc stripped everything he could out of the vehicle thinking it was going to get scrapped. In a last ditch effort he got hold of a senior officer at the station who turned everything around and was going to go to the magistrates to try and get the whole thing turned around, but of course Marc felt his whole trip has been ruined by his dealings with the police and just wants to get home. So this chap has said that he will ensure the shippers can pick the vehicle up - which is supposed to happen on the 23rd April.

Since this he has found out that there is no way anyone can insure a foreign registered vehicle in the UK, even with a residential address. So there is actually no way that any foreign vehicle can come into the country unless it is registered in the UK.
But if Marc had done this he would have had trouble getting it back into NZ. So there was actually no way that Marc could tour the UK with his own vehicle.

But I wonder - do they let in any vehicles? What about French
registered vehicles? Does anyone know? Talk about making things
difficult.

And you think things are difficult in Libya Kuno?

So we expect Marc will be back in New Zealand soon after traveling to
20 countries in about 6 months of traveling, with no problems in any of
them until he reached good old England.

Sad that such an adventure finished in these circumstances."