Peelies travels

Continuing south towards the Serbia / Macedonia border, the satnav warned of a lack of detail, "do you wish to continue with this route?" However we are not intrepid explorers and Macedonia comes with a few " be careful" warnings, so we decided to stay on the motorway :-) We didn't explore Serbia; it will wait for another trip. So it was on to the border. Here, passport and V5 were required again and also proof of insurance. We didn't have any of course. When we rang the UK insurance company call centres prior to the trip, most had no idea where these countries are. They don't understand non-EU. "Macedonia - can you spell that"? The nice man at the passport office was already expecting me to say that I would buy my insurance at the "Green card office" and he handed back one passport and the V5 and put mine in his pocket until I had the necessary paper for the Landy. Unfortunately in spite of the Land Rover being classed as PL...

We left the bells and cuckoos behind and hit the road towards Austria. The Landy drives nicely on the motorway and so far has just required a little top-up of engine oil. I'm not sure why it's using oil but it seems ok. There's a biggish puff of black smoke on startup. I think black = diesel and oil would be blue. I'll have to check. There's absolutely no coolant loss so that's all good. (Reference to W1A there.) Middle Germany is a lovely area. All the houses look cared for and it's easy to see how they used up the solar feed-in tariff so quickly (they introduced the idea before we in the UK did). Many many roofs have solar panels but there are also acres and acres ( hectares?) of commercial solar panel farms. Pushing on into Austria, we picked a campsite for an overnight halt right next to the Danube. By now it was cold and damp but we used the tent sunshade as an awning. Then it was into the restaurant next door. We were actually at an embarkation ...

Its been a very pleasant start to our drive to Greece. Our first thoughts have been "how's the Landy going to perform."  This is because we didn't have time to drive it more than a couple of hundred miles before setting off on a two thousand mile outward leg. However, the drive to Hull was a steady two hours and we reached the ferry early. So early in fact that we tried to say hello to a client at ABP offices at the dockside. Although he was in a meeting and therefore not available, we did exchange pleasantries via texts! Then it was up the slope and over the Linkspan onto the ferry. That Is a previous project that is still going strong; a clever bit of engineering in which I was fortunate to be involved, alongside Nick Totterdell's Riverside Automation, in which the Linkspan, connected to the ship, automatically follows it as it floats up and down at the quayside, through twelve hours of tidal rise/fall. It's a great start to a continental trip as the fer...

Here is our new Landy. It's a 1996 Defender 110 County Station Wagon. The engine is the 300Tdi which is a straightforward diesel that doesn't have an ecu so we won't need access to computer diagnostics in order to fault find. It was bought at the end of 2014 in 'restored' condition, but we soon discovered that the restoration was wallpaper and in fact it required some serious work on the drivetrain, hubs and brakes. The jobs done: Rear half-shafts and drive flanges Front n/s CV joint and drive flange Front ventilated brake discs One old and one new front disc New brake callipers fitted to each corner Rear lower link arm bushes Front radius arm bushes New shockers all round Front turrets replaced with galvanised versions New transmission brake shoes ( after replacing the failed rear transfer box oil seal). Replaced the rear body cappings with galvanised - hence the silver coloured band around the body. Galvanised capping, supports the r...