Just Popping Out Adventures.
 

Hi guys and girls,

Well, we are one week away from selling years of crap that we have found ourselves accumulating and selling that piece of ground with bricks neatly piled on top of each other the government like to call property.

Having been a good little boy for 53 years and buying into the whole " you must buy your own place, work five days a week minimum to pay all the bills and taxes....keep you in that mode to ensure the country can function....then hand all the money back from the sale of your house when they wheel you into a care home" Hmmmm we thought, it could be fun...after all we quite like mince.

Then we had a second thought ( jeez, I'm so glad I went to school that day when we studied geography) lets see what's going on elsewhere!

I would love to now tell you all how much we have...

1) planned our route
2) got our visas
3) got our carnet from the Gestapo...I mean Rac.
4) learnt several languages.
5) read up on how to reduce our carbon footprint.
6) contacted King Carlos of Dakar for driving lessons.
7) joined Prince Harry in a freezer to acclimatise.
8) eat various insects and sheep testicles.

Truth is we have done bugger all other then prep our Toyota Surf 3ltr with rocket launchers and a big fridge for all the beer...

Alright, no rocket launchers, but definatly the fridge... No doubt the other stuff will be sorted in time ( may give the Prince Harry thing a miss ) its just that we have given ourselves a time limit of 2 years...or 3....or 4... or....oh, I don't know, it will be awhile.

We may get fed up after 2 weeks, after all that's pretty much all we usually get! Oh my god, if we can make it past 2 weeks and not look at each other asking " what next?" we will be ok I guess.

We have been asked if we will be having a blog.... My first thought were no... Reason being that I'm not sure my view of things in general is quite the norm.

I remember reading a blog by a guy called Harry ( no, not the one in the freezer ) Across then up. It had to be one of the funniest blogs I've ever read and begged to be made into a book.

Now, this guy was highly educated and cleverly funny. His acerbic style was great and although I lack his education, I share his views.

So, I'm wondering who would want to hear the rantings of a 53 year old other than my kids and parents. We have just returned from being in Florida for a month which was 29 days too long...if I had to listen to another stranger tell me how much they sold their company for, how much they now earn, how much their house is worth and what Ferrari they own I swear I would have vomited all over them for the fun of it... I could fill two A4 pages on my experiences out there which I find strange as I sooooo want to have the part of my brain which deals with memory burnt out with a red hot poker to forget it....

This got me thinking...being quite attached to what little brain I have left after years of banging my head against the wall in frustration or simply enjoying all the things health freaks tell me is bad for me all my life I figured the odd rant via my iPad may keep me sane...but my upset others.

What the heck, people can send me hate mail or just switch off .... Good news there is going to be a blog...:D I guess we will add lots of other standard stuff about us..the truck and when we have an idea of what we are doing, routes etc.

Well I'm fed up tapping this screen, but will be back with other ramblings soon..

While I remember check out Gary Turk " look up" on YouTube...then send it to your kids to pee them off...:funmeteryes:

Cheers Kevin and Heike...

Enjoy your trip and look forward to the blog.:thumbup1:

Homesdale fan like I am ?.".... Just a guess from your palace name.

Top man, yes of course!

Awesome of course you must blog for us who are still about 14 weeks away from the same. It will keep me inspired as I Wade through mud.... my house renos are fast tracked and I'm selling pretty much everything except for the house. I'm also starting a new contract until we leave. Can't wait. Our blog is still in its infancy but hopefully it will become more interesting one we leave.
Www.roostersoverland.wordpress.com

Nice one....we will be get keeping an eye on each other.

I feel ours will be a bit of a slow burn because in true fashion, keeping our plans quite lose we plan to see out the summer visiting places in the UK we have not been to. So, anyone reading this in outer Mongolia get ready for some amazing tales....anyone in the UK is welcome to switch off.

Having said that we may excite you with wise words off a summer spent in France and Spain....because we will get so peed off with the rain here. Hardly adventures into the unknown we realise, but Columbus had to start from somewhere. Anyway, we have heard that the French may not strike anymore this summer and thought we should take advantage of this. Also the spainish are offering free sangria to all tourists to boost the economy.

Happy travels guys and girls....we begin ours tommorow...

Kevin and Heike.

travel safely and ejoy the freedom and don't worry about tomorrow,,,we have completed 3 years travel its good to look back on our blog at,,,Travels with Tango One - Free Travel Blogs


Steve/m

Big thanks Steve. Will check your blog out.

Have you Left?
 

So please let us know here if you finally decided on a blog Overland Tonka.

To write your experiences down (whatever you will do from writing a blog, publishing articles at newspapers, starting your own thread at HuBB or even write a book) will help you to travel more conscious, will help you to memorize more details about your trip.

I never forget this austrian couple i meet in Brazzaville, who had to wait there a month for a visa - they arent able to tell about their experiences of their trip till congo.. "oh that sooo far away, long ago".

It helps yourself to do an writeup, helps others to get inspired :mchappy:

Surfy

Extreme weather and language problems.
 

Welcome to North Wales in July...

Even the locals were bemused by the sideways rain and strong winds.

This was in snowdonia, a place where the names of towns have several vowels missing from them. " where have you just come from?" someone would ask. " no idea...it had two LL's at the beginning and an H at the end."

Now before anyone starts jumping up and down about my lack of ability to master a language I will never need, I want to make it clear that a love the idea of people living on a small island such as ours sticking to the welsh language as it feels like they are saying " we have our own identity...get used to it!!"

As you may have guessed we have gone for the idea of keeping a record of our thoughts and experiences. A blog App will be sorted in the future, but we quite like the community feel on here and have read some great stuff on the Hubb.

So, back to Wales. Heike, my wife, had never been there and after the first three days never wanted to go ever again. The sight of the third tent making a break for freedom and attempting to get the record for the fastest time up the mountain next to the campsite put a bit of a damper on things. Nevertheless, we pulled into the carpark at the foot of Mount Snowdon to have a look.... Hmmm covered in cloud. Let's go up, was the snap decision. On went the hiking boots and off we trotted. Then we walked. Then we sat down. Years of smoking, drinking, eating what I want and generally having a good time doing all the fun things I was told not to had kicked in. I had done this climb twice before, so what's the problem.... Ahhh twenty years passing since then maybe the reason.

We pushed on and the old joints and muscles started to remember what they were supposed to do again...there I was thinking 53 was a good age for a RTW trip...maybe I should have made it 43. Still, walk up and get the train down...easy. Errr NO, after high winds which tried to push us off the mountain, admittedly the quickest way down, the train was stopped. Guess that's more walking then! Three days later I am happy to report that our legs were still made of a cross between jelly and shaving foam with the pain only kicking in if we tried to stand up.

Driving south down the coast the weather changed.. Sun, sun and sun. By now our beer hunt was in full swing and we were enjoying the very different welsh beer. We met great people and sampled many different campsites ranging from the tiny one in St David's called Whitesands right on the beach which we would highly recommend if you like hanging out with surf dudes, getting drunk, dancing and watching the sun go down...we liked it so much we stayed four days..:oops2: then there was the largest campsite in Europe.. Shell island, with great views across the beach and bay to snowdonia.

By now you maybe wondering why no pretty photos??..well our old iPad Mk1 can just cope with logging onto the Hubb, but can't upload pics. So if your bored reading, just skip to the next post where I will use my phone for pics. It looks like we may splash out on a latest iPad or even a apple laptop as I may end up eating the iPad in frustration.

Pembrokeshire was stunning...if you haven't been...go there. This whole " lets see stuff in the uk" was working out well as we headed into Cornwall via London. Those of you used to a map would think we have the road sense of a hedgehog, but Heike needed her last course of jabs at the doctors. Yeah, great organisational skills I know.

Cornwall we have been to many times...me since I was a kid, but it's our favourite place in the uk and we can't get enough of the place. Then the real reason why we were hanging around the uk kicked in with a phone call at 4.30am... Daughter in hospital... Baby on the way...so we're we and that day headed for London.

That's where we find ourselves now. Sitting in our daughters house ( which is very odd, proper bed and four walls with a talking box in the corner of the room) where we will stay for awhile to help out due to complications during the birth. Mum and baby are ok, but it was seriously touch and go.

The question is where next?? With a fantastic summer we are having it is obvious it won't last for long. We love cold wet climates as much as we love a dose of dysentery. Wanting to see eastern Europe next summer before Russia has other ideas, we have to stay quite local. The idea maybe to hang out in Crete or morrocco. We could even fly to Thailand and backpack around Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Crete seems favourite at the moment...then again maybe... Insert ideas here...

Thoughts on things so far is we don't think it has quite sunk in yet that we are on our travels.. Could it be..

1) only been away one month.
2) not left the uk.
3) old age so nothing sinks in.

Campsites....

With the couples we meet the male is usually mad keen to do an extended trip into the unknown. Where as the female usually drags him away as he pops the question " what do you think darling??...we could do this!" followed by a refusal to speak to us the next day for putting stupid ideas in his head.

Whistling in toilet/shower blocks...

The rear of these structures should be used to tie the culprits up and make them stand on plastic beer crates barefoot. Why do these guys feel the need to do this?? I have a couple of theory's....

1) not allowed to do this at home.
2) to mask the fact that they make a noise while sitting on the toilet.
3) so they don't have to say " hello" to others.
4) think it acually sounds good.
5) so that no one pushes the toilet door while they are in there.

Whatever the reason this has to stop...I am told by my wife that this is a male only habit which means if you bump into me exiting a ladies toilet in the future you will understand why.

Types of campsite.....

Not sure where we are at with this one. The cleanliness and regimented rules of the camping and caravan club... Hmmm not sure. The remoteness of a site with no facilities.... Hmmm not sure. The party anything goes site.... Hmmm not sure. The holiday resort, pub and amusements on site... Hmmm not sure.

One thing that has become a pain is explaining that our tent is on the roof... We don't bother anymore as the first few places said they didn't have that type of description on their computer.. Errr it's a car and a tent you numb nuts. We don't know what to charge you... IT'S A CAR AND A TENT!! The fact is we take up less space because the tent is on the roof... So it's a motorhome??....... dohdohdohdoh. We don't bother now.

The truck has been behaving well despite the very hot weather and the reputation for 3ltr surfs to overheat. No doubt we will shed a few kilos along the way ( the truck..not me) when we sort out stuff we really don't need. Strange how you find yourself looking at six tshirts and thinking that's four too many.

I will post up more details about the truck at a later date, as I really enjoy reading about others trucks for ideas etc.

That's it for now.... Pics to follow...

Cheers all... Kevin and Heike.

After an evening attempting to upload pics we have bit the bullet and bought an MacBook air today.

We hope to have this blog looking alot more interesting like some of the others on here soon.

Just bear with us....:helpsmilie:

Ok... Lets get the rant out of the way now...

What is it with France and WiFi??????? Or rather the lack of it.

Every campsite and cafe we have been in say they have this magical wonder of the modern age, but it turns out that it powered by a monkey on a pedal bike.

Now i understand the monkey gets tired and this must be the reason it fails to hold a connection our simply does not work at all. When you ask if the monkey can get back to work the answer appears to be " He is on lunch" ... " Maybe tomorrow he will get it to work " ..or " Sorry, it's Monday "

We have been travelling down to the south of France for the last week and this is the first sign that i may be able to post something....although i'm not holding my breath, as i have tried and failed many many times.

So, yes we are in France and wondering which way to turn once we hit the coast... Spain and into Maroc, or Italy and down to Crete for the winter.

Maroc is favourite at the moment as we are finding ourselves in a bit of a holiday mode beer and need to get in the swing of proper travelling/overlanding.

I will attempt to post some photos just to prove i have got the hang of this new macbook air thing we now have.

We started last week because we spent 2 weeks with our daughter after the birth of the latest grandchild.... all was not good during the birth and our daughter lost more blood than she actually has in her body....good news is both she and the baby are fine.

Having stuck to campsites this last week we have found we get very mixed responses. Great friendly people and down right rude ones that own/run the sites.

" Bonjour ".... " Camping please" in my best French accent.
" Non!!!!"
" But this is a campsite "
" Oui!!!!"
" Non camping for you"
So i go through a few checks... Smile..check...wave...check...attempt french...check...any bogies in my nose showing...check....zip on shorts done up...check... Now during this strange exchange things got very odd. The husband of the woman who ran the place kept winking at me.. I took this to mean that either he fancied me or he was looking to hide in the back of our truck in a vain attempt to escape the dragon he was married to...:help smilie:

Just to balance things i would like to talk about how we in the UK are being taken for fools...and we are happy to do so. Lidl and Aldi in France charge 1euro 50cent for a bottle of wine!!!! Their food appears cheaper too. So, for all you lot back home who go to these " stack it high, sell it cheap " German power houses, leave the Waitrose/Harrods carrier bags at home because 1) you not fooling anyone.. and 2) be proud that you are going to a place which is obviously expensive compared to abroad. You paying a premium for that German logo so display it. After all who would have thought Skoda would become an ok badge????.. and lets be honest Skoda's have become more reliable than BMW's.


Right...here goes..all being well and good you will get a photo or two and this post will appear.... I'm just off to feed the monkey...did i mention the WiFi??

Back again..the monkey said NON!!! to photos...you tell me..:taz:

2nd attempt at photos...

We have a new game we have been playing since just before Dijon..

Its called " Where is that noise coming from??" It cannot be another hangover..

Now it could be the turbo or the alternator..the power seems fine and the engine is running well...golden rule number one for me is never assume just because a part is only two weeks old that it must be ok. Sure enough, the sound of a bag of nails being shaken at 4000rpm is the new alternator which does not like the idea of a RTW trip.

So, we are camped up not far from the coast awaiting a new one to arrive from the UK...hopefully Monday. The old one will be sent back for a refund.

Oh...and the Engel fridge we have (older type) has a problem with the temp control switch...a simple fix if i could find a electronic store like we have in the UK such as Maplins.... two hopes of that... Bob hope and no hope. Still we will keep an eye out for someone or something to get it fixed.

Good news is that we have left the monkey on a bike WiFi and hit upon good service...i guess it could have been bad luck before...still no more bad luck please with the WiFi and the car...its sunday, so we may visit the local church for divine intervention.