The home stretch - Edward retires

Amanda, Annie and a cat

By mid November we were running out of time and money, so we pretty much made a straight run for London via Calais. On the way we stopped in Cologne to see Amanda's friend Annie. Cologne is, like a lot of German cities, very new compared to the rest of Europe. It got smashed during world war two; one allied air raid lasted for 75 minutes and flatted nearly 300 hectares of city. So it's all been rebuilt and sadly I think pre war Colonge was probably prettier. Today... well it's just a little bit square looking. It is still a cool city though, and walking along the Rhine was really nice. We went out for dinner (awesome cheap Turkish) and had a few wines back at Annie's boyfriend's flat. Waking up a little groggy and hungover, we skipped through the south of Holland in a few hours and starting planning where to camp in Belgium for a night. Just after crossing the Holland-Belgium border we saw a little old lady parked up on the side of the road waving us down. We stopped to see if she needed a hand and realised that she spoke French, not Flemish (Amanda speaks Dutch - Flemish is basically Dutch). French was the only way forward. Luckily Amanda has a reasonable grasp of French from working a few ski seasons in the Alps and she managed to figure out what was going on. The little old Lady was named Anne Marie (say it like Pepe Le Pew and it sounds awesome). Apparently she had swerved to miss an oncoming car and hit the curb, blowing one of her tyres out. I started to change the wheel but the spare was flat too so I had to drive our van to the nearest petrol station, which wasn't so easy to find. When I finally arrived back, after trying 3 non existent petrol stations (thanks satnav), another couple was there too. They spoke perfect English and helped us figure out what was going on. Anne Marie was referring to us as 'the charming English' and insisted that we come to her home to share dinner and stay the night. We eagerly took her offer so followed her home in case she had any more trouble. About 10 minutes down the road we noticed a smell of rubber, but it was too dark to see if her tyre was flat, so I began flashing my lights to get her attention. When she finally stopped her rear tyre was billowing out smoke and had gone dead flat. It too must have ruptured when she hit the curb but it hadn't deflated until she began driving again. She was a bit confused and I was getting pretty nervous when she was standing in the middle of a busy road, at night, invisible in her grey cardi. Amanda somehow explained to her that she should leave her car on the side of the road and that we would take her home in our van. Amanda lay in the back so Anne Marie could travel in comfort. We put on the sound track from Amelie to set the mood and she muttered on about god knows what all the way to her house. Getting live driving directions in a foreign language is hard. Especially when your guide is giving you a history lesson along the way. A history lesson that you can't understand. Eventually I got used to which gestures were for attractions and facts, and which gestures were directions. We finally made it. Anne Marie had a really nice apartment and some fantastic wine. I can't remember what we had for dinner but it was probably great. The town was called Nemur. It was a classic European town with a nice river running through the middle, an awesome fort on a hill, and lots of people smoking in the street or biking about with baguettes poking out of the front basket. 

Our awesome impromptu host, Anne Marie

The following morning we said our goodbyes to Anne Marie and headed for La Coupole, a massive concrete bunker used for producing, storing and launching V2 rockets during the 1940's. Now it's a pretty impressive museum, with lots of interactive displays and some interesting historical documentaries. Sometimes museums take being a museum too far, and instead of preserving what is awesome, they cover it in smoke and mirrors and playstation games. La Coupole is pushing it, but thankfully it's incredible story outplays the tacky delivery. We spent a good few hours here before finding the last camp site of our trip.

On the channel ferry - we made it!
'Put something really good on the ipod'

We managed to score a really cheap ferry from Calais to Dover for €35 so we arrived in London with little hassle. It was great to see Paul and Mems again and we had a good couple of nights catching up. After nearly four months travelling we were pretty broke so we decided that we'd do live in care work for ENA. This is how I've been making my money in the UK. It's relatively easy work and there are no living costs, but you sacrifice a social life and a fair bit of freedom. The pay isn't spectacular, considering you are 'at work' 22 hours a day (you only do maybe 4-5 hours actual work - if you catch my drift), but without the heinous cost of living in a place like London it's easy to cash up pretty fast. If you are spectacularly tight, which you can be as there's literally no need to spend money, you could walk away with £4000 in your pocket after 13 weeks working, and probably get some tax back too. I haven't managed this as there's always something for me to spend money on. Like guitars or cheap calories in kebab form. So we'd have to be apart for 3 months again (this is my third placement), but by the end of it we'd be well cashed up and free to holiday some more. As Amanda was new to the job she had to go up to St Albans for a four day training session. Meanwhile I stayed in London and attempted to sell the van.

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Tracks:

A map of our gps logs with some bits missing


I put an ad on gumtree.co.uk and had a couple of time wasters arrange to meet me, then never show. I was starting to lose faith. One potential customer wanted to check it out so I drove Edward the 10 miles (16km to normal people) from Putney to White Chapel, trying to avoid the congestion zone (which was a bloody awful job first thing on a weekday). This guy seemed pretty keen and was talking about paying £300. He wanted to test drive just to be sure so I jumped in the passenger seat and we went for a hoon. He was driving it pretty hard and saying it was a bit short on power. I asked him if he'd ever driven a non turbo diesel before and he admitted he hadn't, but he still wasn't happy with the power issues. To test this he was basically slamming his foot on the accelerator then letting it off over and over again. It wasn't pretty and poor Edward couldn't handle it. All of a sudden this guy says 'I don' 'ave any powa mate'. I looked at the accelerator pedal and noticed it hanging limp and realised he must have snapped the throttle cable somewhere. He showed no mercy, got out of the van and accused me of trying to sell him a broken van. I bit my tongue and got to work trying to fix the cable so I could move from the middle of a busy east London bus lane. It was a bastard to fix and as I had no tools I ended up just tying the two broken ends together meaning the idle speed was far too high and I couldn't push the pedal all the way to the floor. Cursing ensued. The geezer rang me back and offered £150 as is, but I was so rattled I told him to bugger off as I'd been offered as much for scrap, which was true. I couldn't be bothered any more and didn't want to re tax the van in a few days so I rang the scrap yard and arranged to meet them in a few hours, dropped off all the camping stuff to some charity shops, took all the rest of the crap to the tip, and drove the 45 miles (that's 70km to normal people) to the scrap yard. When I finally arrived there, the meat from the scrap yard said that as I never told him it was resprayed blue ( a non factory colour), and I also hadn't said about the rusty patches, he could only offer me £100. ARRRGGH!!! I managed to talk him up to £120 and gave up. I was exhausted. I said a sad farewell to Edward but was glad that I wouldn't have to pay insurance or tax on the old beast. It occured to me that the scrap yard dude hadn't looked inside and would probably be cursing at the extra labour required to rip the bed structure and drawers out. Haha, sucker. After three hours of walking, bussing, train catching and tubing, I finally arrived at Paul's flat in Fulham. He opened some beer and we had a laugh about geezers who alway go for the hard sell (or buy) and make life a misery for anyone with a conscience. But vats jist lundun innit.


****The next few paragraphs are for anyone keen to try a similar road trip. It's quite boring otherwise. 


We spent about £4200 between us on our trip ; that includes the cost of the van and repairs, registration and vehicle tax, insurance, ferries, heaps of diesel (a metric tonne even), public transport in bigger cities, food, beer, attractions, and all other travelling costs. We left Edinburgh on the 3rd of August and arrived in London on the 25th of November. 114 days in total. 16,000km travelled. 16 countries visited. So it worked out about £18.42 a day each, or 13.1p per km each. That's a lot less than most people living in the UK get by on. Guinness knows how we pulled it off. 97% of stats are made up, so take what you will from that. 


££€€ saving tips: You probably don't need them, but here they are anyway. Pretentious...

• We didn't pay for one night's accommodation the whole trip. Use couchsurfing, ask your mates or relations for a pad, or build a mobile hotel for less than the price of renting in London for a week. We slept in our van over forty times. Couchsurfing has an added bonus of introducing you to cool locals who know loads about their territory. It's hard to meet people when you're driving from camp site to camp site, or hotel to hotel.
• We made most of our meals ourselves; maybe once or twice a week we would eat out. In saying that eating out is pretty cheap in Europe (excluding Scandinavia). Lidl, watch out for the Lidl, it's got everything in it. Lidl/Aldi are the kings of cheap lunch stuff, cheap fruit and fibre for breakfast, and completely random stuff like cycling shorts and torque wrenches...? In Europe fresh baguettes are ten at a time for a dime and cold meats and cheeses are deliciously priced.
• Try to avoid buying booze in Scandinavia. Stock up in Germany before crossing the Danish border. We pretty much drank heaps everywhere else, although we were lucky to meet awesome people who insisted on giving us drinks. It's much cheaper to buy high octane booze in Europe (£3-4 for a litre of vodka in Poland, yeow), but beer is pretty reasonable too.
• We tried to fill our tank in a cheap country if we were about to go somewhere more expensive. When we left the UK we had an almost dry tank knowing that it's heaps cheaper in Belgium for diesel.
• We saved a bunch of cash by taking a little time when it came to choosing what tourist attractions to see. There is so much crap out there. A few times we did waste money on shit and it just re-iterated the point that you should research what you want to see before you do it. Trusting blurbs on tourist maps will bust you every time. Trusting new friends is the best way to find awesome things to do.
• It's sounds stupid but trust your gut and have a gamble on your luck. We saved heaps by carrying on when our van was bleeding to death. We could have stopped and waited for a fuel pump that cost more than the van did, but we gambled on finding something better up the road. That something was over 2000km further up the road but it was there. We were bloody lucky, but we really had nothing to lose. One of the benefits of using an old banger is you're not attached fiscally. When we did spend buckets on repairs it was because the brakes were shot. Brakes are pretty crucial. They're kind of like pet insurance.

If you flew to all the major destinations on our trip, and took trains to reach smaller ones, you'd be looking at paying over £2000 each. Which isn't bad over four months.

You can get a global eurorail pass, which is valid for as much travel as you like in three months, for £988. This is probably the best option if you don't want to risk buying a van. There is also a 30 day coach pass through eurolines from £279 depending on the time of year you choose. But buses are an arse breaker, they are slow, the view is mainly motorways and they smell funny. If you don't want to drive, get a train.

Over the whole trip we spent around £1350 on fuel. Adding the loss we made on the van (including repairs) it comes to about £2000. So £1000 each isn't bad I reckon. Comparing that to £988 for the train pass, and adding value of freedom of choice and having a bed available at all times, I think the van wins. I have wondered if we were being a bit greedy travelling all that way by car, emitting hundreds of kilograms of carbon along the way. I haven't done any solid calculations but this article suggests that driving an economical car long distance (45mpg or 5.6litre/100km - we were getting between 45 and 55mpg), with more than one occupant, produces less carbon emissions than buses, trains, or planes. Planes are a no brainer; captain carbon footprint flies when he travels. But I'm struggling to believe that buses or trains produce more carbon per passenger than a light van with two people in it. But I'll take it and give myself a pat on the back, then hug some trees. It's obvious, but worth a mention, that the emissions produced in manufacturing our van was already a 'sunk carbon cost' so to speak, because it certainly wasn't brand new. But who would buy a brand new van for a road trip?


***End rant


If I'm honest, I never thought we would make it the whole way around. I knew I'd bought a rubbish van the second after I'd bought it, but once I'd signed the papers there was really no backing out. We kind of felt that making it to the north of Sweden would be a big achievement and anything after that would be a bonus round. Nearly two months of bonus travel is nice.  

It's now been nearly three months since we sold Edward. I wish we were still out there somewhere in Europe, or driving home to New Zealand, but unfortunately cash is king and we ran out of it. We've been working in our separate (100km's separate) live in placements, going a bit stir crazy but getting on with it. Amanda and I managed to meet up in London over the weekend (not so frugal - wallet eating London) and now we are back working for a few more weeks before we leave the UK for good (insert a face that doesn't know whether to smile or pout here). There are some big plans ahead for our next adventures: Turkey, Nepal, India, Thailand, and finally home to the South Pacific. Another 3 months travelling. Haha, awesome.