The First Leg!

After an uneventful stint through the chunnel, we emerged in France with the intention of putting some pedal to the metal till we reached Amsterdam. Sadly not having maps with a small enough scale to navigate through towns and cities meant we circled the 'King Leopold II tunnels' in Brussels some four hundred times. This wasted a good couple of hours and so we finally launched into Amsterdam around 2am. We waltzed into town with the hope of finding some action, but all we managed was a few glimpses of the red light district, a couple of beers and got soaked. Poor effort! Driving is more tiring than we thought. As there were only the three of us, rather than lugging our tents into the campsite, we just kipped in the 3* luxury that is Dougie. An interesting move when the next morning Advait tried to sneak into the campsite for a cheeky shower, was rejected big style and 10 minutes later we had the dutch rozzers knocking on our window. Some swallowed toothpaste aside, it was a surprisingly amiable encounter with the 'good cop' expressing a fair bit of interest in the rally, and the 'bad cop' taking our passports away for a brief going over. Nothing too stressful, and we did what we were told and hit the road with the mission to get to somewhere near Prague.

The drive to Prague was going smoothly until we learned that Matty was arriving a full day before everyone else thought he was. Ah well, that's coordination for you. We left the oblivious Matty with the task of finding us a suitable hostel, and lit the afterburners. A few hours later, we had a Matty, a parking spot, a bed and were chowing down on some Maccy D's. Was almost like we'd planned it. We left in the morning with a quick detour to the local Tesco before envisaging a quick twenty minute drive to the outskirts of Prague for the official 'Czech out' party. Imagine our surprise when we found out that it was actually a full two and a half hour drive away in a non-descript 14th century village. This meant we had a quick turnaround in way of putting up our tents on arrival into the campsite before heading to the castle which was the venue for the night. The theme was 'the age of exploration', so we went dressed in our scrubs, naturally.

The party itself was surreally good. Imagine the scene; hundreds of people in fancy dress eating barbecued food in and amongst the ruins of Klenova castle. After queueing for a few pieces of miscellaneous meat, we sat down at the picnic tables next to a group dressed as the Knights of the Templar. The head knight was clearly disgruntled, muttering something about it not being a bad meal for £650 (our entry fee to the rally). The evening went much further south after that, with a free Hendrick's gin bar not aiding our efforts to stay disciplined.
After having drunken banter with a South African wearing a kilt (don't ask), drinking until speaking became difficult, and setting Matt on fire, we bedded down for the night. Fortunately, when morning came around we were buoyed by the fact that it was clear the free Hendrick's gin had punished others more than ourselves. One guy was lying unconscious by a fire with a dog licking his face, and a bunch of mischievous Durham grads (!) throwing balls at him. Once we'd stomached the last of the potato grule that was on offer, we hit the road with Nick having the unenviable task of driving first off, with a head that felt like someone was trying to park a truck in there.

We intended to drive for the day, and camp somewhere over the Serbian border but then a unanimous decision was reached whereby we thought it'd be a better idea to reach Kosovo as soon as possible to allow for more downtime with Scottish George. This meant an all night drive, a feat which was made all the harder when we did a few unecessary laps of Budapest. The ensuing cyclical driving was pretty draining, with driver and navigator in the front and the two non-drivers in the back trying to sleep as they bounced off the walls and ceiling.
Driving though the Serbian and Kosovan borders in the early hours of the morning could be descibed as slighty spooky or by lesser men as shit scary. To be honest it was fairly uneventful but on around five hours of poor quality sleep in the last 48 hours our imaginations were running wild and when the rear door of the ambulance gets flung open and you're faced with a gruff border guard who speaks no English, it's hard not to have sticky situations running through your mind. That's even without the snipers posted on the bridge. We eventually arrived at Scottish's at around mid day after a stunning drive through a misty sunrise and promptly passed out in his front room. 26 hours driving and we were shattered!

By the way, we now have a Sly, the team is complete and we're chilling with Scottish in Pristina. Rock on!