Gerard Brown

Illusions…

Welcome parents

Thanks for following me. I think you’re the second, there’ll be three when Jennifer works it out.

Not packing now, drinking a nice crisp white wine, backing up some hard drives and writing down serial numbers of cameras.

Jennifer was Star of the Day today and William and I had a haircut. That’s it – nothing else.

There’s always so much to do, so little time but with lots of hanging around as well.

Packing.

Leaving for my third Peking to Paris rally tomorrow. As usual there’s the mixture of sadness and excitement. After almost six months at home it’s strange to get the big bags out of the loft and start filling them.

Fear of flying

If you’re reading this I’ve landed safely; honestly I don’t know why I worry. I watched the 20 minute BA film on overcoming fear of flying. Very reassuring as we ‘winged’ our way over the North Sea, The Hague and into Eastern Europe. Very little cloud meant
fantastic views over the Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Caspian and the ‘Stans.
Looking down I remembered driving through all of that in 2010. Thankfully it was as smooth and flat in the air as it looked on the ground. Once over the Caspian and Bukhara, Ashgabat and Almaty hived into view this marked the point where we started to climb from 11227m to 11887m presumably to get us over the tail end of the Himalayas. Darkness began to fall with the sun dipping away behind us. I also watched another BA documentary about the overhaul of a 747. How do they get off the ground …?
The Trans Himalayan turbulence wasn’t so bad after all and the long slow glide down into Delhi got me quite quite excited. Lots of twinkling lights down below.

A foggy ride to Heathrow.

5.50am the taxi arrived. Just as I’d started to haul 58kg of spinning bike from the garage to the kitchen. Helen likes to spin when I’m away, it gives her something to do.
The driver is Iranian, he came here for treatment following the Iran / Iraq war when he was caught in a land mine blast. He married an Iranian doctor from Oxford.
I spent a fitful night. Wanting to sleep because I was tired but not wanting to sleep to savour every conscious moment with the family. As a result now I’m checked in and waiting at Heathrow I’m shattered. Flying is my least favourite form of transport and 8.25 hours at 39000 feet (or whatever it is) fills me with dread.
However, on the plus side – there’s always a plus side – I am going to what looks to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Strade Bianchi and the ferry from Ancona

Obviously we started early. We always do but today I was up at 4.30am to nurse an ailing Internet connection back to life. My ministrations were not in vain and a precious packet of pixels made its way to a cyber repository safe and sound within the hour. At the same time I made my way to breakfast and to the truck leaving only the computer to be packed prior to the 5.30am departure. We had around 200km to do before 8.00am.
Fog was once again the dominant feature of the dark journey and was so thick across the central highlands of Italy that one of the cars drove straight into a roundabout. No injuries but a lot of damage we’re told although the Rover is still running. As day dawned, the fog lifted and we pulled off the Tarmac onto the Strade Bianchi, the white gravel roads so common around here.
The ‘test’ was a circuit on a hillside and had it all, narrow climbs, descents, switchbacks and off camber washaways. No surprise that the smaller cars made the most of it.
Once the competition had been wrapped up we made our way to the Port of Ancona to catch the Superfast to Igoumenitsa on the other side of the Adriatic. These ships are excellent, the cabins and food on board are superb. It’s an eighteen hour crossing though so they need to be. There’s even wifi, it’s slow – painfully – but its reliable enough to send another load of pictures up to the ether. We dock around 8.00am and head straight into the Greek hills.

The Ligurian hills.

Pretty much a transit day to but one with a superb sting in the tail. 874km to Italy. Leaving Beaune under grey and foggy skies we made our way south on the Autoroute crossing the flooded plains of the Saone and began the long slow climb into the Alps. Through the St Jean du Maurienne valley the fog lifted and we were treated to blue sky, snow capped peaks and an empty motorway. Either side the Madeleine, the Glandon and the Croix de Fer framed the scene perfectly. A quick coffee and pastry just before the Frejus tunnel set us up for the Italian Autostrada. Once we’d adjusted to the more Latin driving on the other side of the tunnel we made good time to the next coffee stop! Further fortified it was off the motorways and into the campagna, specifically the Ligurian Hills and the maze of craggy, damp, slippy and narrow roads. Italy in the winter is sleepy and felt very remote as we wound our way through villages, past farmhouses and over a dam to our ‘checkpoint’ just below the village of Barbagelata. Once we’d seen 39 cars safely through we headed out of the World Cup section and found Peter Scott, car 20 with the left hand rear wheel missing 100m short of TC3.9 the offical end of the section. No injuries or further damage so we left him negotiating with a local – presumably to secure some assistance. Another 50km or so got us back on the Autostrada for the last 183km to Firenze, the night halt.

The Somme

So Kent was wet but France is wetter. Having crossed at 3.40am we arrived bleary and weary in Calais. After a regroupment at Urvilliers and a small French breakfast we left the autoroute and took to the fields. Ploughed fields. With a narrow gravel track dissecting them. More superb marshalling, an accurate road book with GPS waypoints and the mud made for some great driving. Now we’re set for Beaune

Wye railway crossing.

Points just changed.