Hey people,
Just thought I’d post an update on what we’ve been doing over the last few days. First up, I’ve uploaded a heap of photos to Flickr, so head over to flickr.com/blinken if you want to check them out. I’ll be keeping this up to date whenever I have a decent Internet connection.
We’ve been busy getting things packed, buying last-minute camping gear, drinking, standing in the rain, getting the car prepped (ie. changing an air filter for the first time in my life), seeing London, drinking, getting haircuts (hai mum!)

I’ve decided that the UK is however a third world country, based on the following criteria:
- They can’t afford to buy refrigerators for their beer, so they make you drink it warm
- It rains continuously, in summer. Except for about 3 months of the year when it sleets.
- Sunscreen is kept in the “travel accessories” section of the supermarket
- Doctors are a rare, foreign species here. After asking at the pharmacy, the local hospital emergency department, a medical clinic and a travel clinic we finally found someone capable of writing a prescription at the local Tescos (the equivalent of Wallmart here).
- They have strange paper money that doesn’t fit in my wallet, and 1- and 2-pence coins which as far as I can tell are utterly useless.
- The beer is warm.
On the plus side? They have Krispy Kreme donuts (despite Adon’s best efforts to eat them all), so there’s evidently some hope for a recovery.
We’ve also got some shiny new rally tyres on the car. They’re BF Goodrich M51’s, look totally awesome, and appear significantly less likely to fall off the car than the last lot.

So we’re pretty much ready to go. We’ll be heading down to Portsmouth today for the rally start – keep an eye on our tracking page to see where we are.

Until next time,
Patrick