Collecting the Beast, Our New Expedition Truck: Part 2 – Rotterdam to Bournemouth

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Tuesday: Rotterdam – Calais (By Accident)

Mark was in Rotterdam.

This was following THE most ill-fated, 26-hour overland journey from high in the Italian Alps to The Low Countries to collect The Beast, a 30-year old ex-army truck that is to become our new, all-terrain mobile home.

Lady Luck had already made it clear that she was not on our side. After all we’d been through just purchasing The Beast and getting Mark as far as Rotterdam to collect her, I was riddled with angst about whether she would even start, never mind be roadworthy. And it was a good few years since Mark had driven a truck.

My last update had been about midday, before Mark and The Beast had actually met. It was 9:00pm before I got a call to say,

“I’m about eighty miles from the Channel Tunnel,” which was a shame.

I had just paid a supplement for the ferry crossing that he had booked from Le Havre.Continue reading “Collecting the Beast, Our New Expedition Truck: Part 2 – Rotterdam to Bournemouth”

Collecting The Beast, Our New Expedition Truck: Part 1 – Staffal to Rotterdam

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The Beast waits patiently in Rotterdam. But would Mark ever get there?!

Monday: Staffal – Pont St Martin

As part of our Brexit-Busting plan to abandon Europe for Mongolia, Mark and I have bought a 24.5 tonne truck to convert into our new home. She is a Volvo N10. She is HUGE, so we named her The Beast.

We fully accepted that the purchase, unseen, of an unregistered, 30-year-old Belgian army truck in Holland to import into the UK was not likely to be 100% straightforward. With blithe determination and the conviction that ‘there’s always a solution’, we jumped through the many administrative hoops and squared that circle. Yet throughout the build-up to Mark going to collect her, it seemed the gods were trying to tell us something.Continue reading “Collecting The Beast, Our New Expedition Truck: Part 1 – Staffal to Rotterdam”

Stuck at Home and Running Out of Ideas? 5 More Things To Do in Lockdown

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The days are getting longer; keep busy! Self-Improve as you Self-Isolate.

Coming up to our fourth week in isolation in Italy and unable to leave the house for over a week, we have had to get creative. Here are a few more ideas to help you while away those hours productively!

In case you missed them, you can also check out 10 Tips to Make Covid-19 Isolation SPLENDID! and “Do More, Feel Better” – Why Not Learn A Language? Continue reading “Stuck at Home and Running Out of Ideas? 5 More Things To Do in Lockdown”

A Life Without Ligaments – And How to Avoid It!

“Most of the All Blacks don’t have A.C.L.’s (Anterior Cruciate Ligaments).”

This was the advice given to me by the orthopaedic surgeon. At the time, in the early 1990s, he also advised me that recovery from the surgery to put things right would be worse than the injury itself; that he couldn’t reproduce the function of a natural A.C.L., whose structure, in layman’s terms, had ‘differential stretchiness’ between the outside and the core; and that if I got myself a CTi knee brace and kept my muscles strong to support the joint, I would be able to ski again. If New Zealand’s fabled rugby union team could play at a professional level without their A.C.L.s, there was hope for me.

Continue reading “A Life Without Ligaments – And How to Avoid It!”