6th December

Up at 8 to travel to south London to pick up Leah on the way to Clackett Lane services for the convoy meet up. No probs finding the place. Next few hours spent sorting out the numbering for the vehicles. Lost Ayeb to another vehicle as he is a driver and someone needs one, in his place comes Cedric from Switzerland. Now we have Leah, Cedric and me in my van. Lots of wandering about, last minute preps, meeting people, taking pics, swapping stickers and info. CB is in place and works.










Alpha Team Lead Vehicle
Muzzakir and his boys are in central London for press conference along with Richard V who has come from North Wales with a minibus and caravan. I have spoken to Richard before on the phone but not met yet. He has kindly agreed to accommodate two members from Istanbul. We move off to Folkestone for first water crossing. Its a beautiful evening and all the vehicles look spectacular in the evening sunlight – particularly the HGV from Bristol signed by people from Bristol.














Convoy at Folkestone

Painless 25 min journey under the channel. Sunday evening we are told our destination is a public ground in Brussels. The group pull out in Calais and it is tricky trying to find the initial route, we end up separated from some of A team and end up with three vehicles with us A2, A3, A4. In addition a four by four waves us over that is separated from its group. They are LPG and need to refuel. When we pull over they are Saj and Muqtar from Bradford – they are very friendly and give us a more detailed atlas of Europe than the one we have. Instructions are to head past Bruges and Gent into then take the Brussels ringroad and come off at junction 7b. Turns out there's no 7b but 7 and 7a. So we all miss the turning and end up almost in town. While attempting to rejoin the route back to camp our vehicle A1 has a blow out on the rear left tyre.

The other vehicles stop with us and assist in taking out some of the aid, we get the tyre changed and move on finally arriving 1.30am. The stopover is an exhibition ground, gravelly ground but nonetheless manage to get our two bed tent up and get heads down by 3am. At this stage we have A1 me, Leah, Cedric, A2 Mohammed, Iqbal, A3 Mujahid, Abdullah, Muazim, A4 Ryan, Nadal, Mesrob, A5 Kamahl, Hassan A6 Ram, Juana, Faith A7 Richard, Jerome, A8 Osman, Muzakkir, Mohammed, Subhani, Kefayet.

Unpacked aid to change tyre