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Hi
Getting my head round installing the reconditioned engine into the Mercedes after a seven week gardening exstravaganza in Cyprus was not easy! The bewildering array of bits and pieces that needed to be bolted on before actually starting the transplant looked daunting, but goodsense prevailed in the end and with the calm assistance of Phil our works mechanic we methodically reduced the pile by starting with the bell houseing, clutch, servo unit, fuel filter and the engine/chasis mountings, (one needs new rubber bushes probably damaged in Russia) and we were almost ready. This left the starter motor, alternator, fuel pump, injectors, and exhaust manifold to be added once the engine was back in.
While in Cyprus I had spent considerable time working out a plan for lifting the engine into place and had come up with a design for an engine cradle to fit onto our trolly jack! Once Phil had grasped the idea of my design it took just an hour to fabricate out of scrap! and worked perfectly, the whole operation took only 20 minutes including having to temporally remove one engine bracket!
Hardly had we tightened the last nut and bolt and Phil was called to a machinary breakdown, I was on my own! With the fuel pump and injectors not yet returned from being checked over I concentrated on the fiddly job of fitting the alternator; difficult wiring connections and fan belt tensioning system make this one of my 'love to hate jobs!' in the end I refitted it three times!
Thankfully the refurbished starter motor slipped into place first time, and I did'nt drop the nuts more than once!
Once in place I was able to get on with the daunting task of the exhaust manifold plus all the pipework back to the silencer; removeing it had taken Phil and I an hour or more of back/neck wrenching hard labour, with this in mind I had cleaned and 'copper slipped' every joint, sleeve, and all the threads I could find, with no sign that Phil could come to my rescue I set about the task, to my ever lasting amazement everything went smoothly, within the hour I was on the phone chasing CCS fuel injection services Retford to enquire how things were progressing in the fuel pump department, not good! But an old pump that had been resting on their store shelf for 5 years provided parts that saved the day! But this was 24 hours before Christmas eve and our works was closing till the new year. With plenty of small jobs lined up for the festive period we decided to leave the tricky job of installing and timing the fuel pump until the team CCS return after the holidays just in case we need help! Meanwhile 'Happy New Year!'
Bill

Hello everyone
We hope you have all had a great Christmas, & for those who celebrate it in early January we hope you will have.
We arrived home from our Cyprus 'holiday' on 12th December - 7 weeks of dawn to dusk gardening - but the result was worth it, the garden is huge but I've included 3 photos to givean idea. However we arrived home very tired & instantly went down with what ever bug has been currently flying around the UK. Bill was furious as the Dr has only just managed to convince him to have the flu jab & as Bill said "I haven't had flu or a serious cold for years".
However he has managed to work on putting the engine back in when he can cadge a lift down to the works where the van is ensconced. But I will leave him to tell you about that.
Christmas has been a non-event for us - no sneeking off to some hide-away, no Christmas shopping, luckily William & Diane & the grand children took pity on us & shared their Christmas dinner with us but we are beginning to feel more human again & starting work on preparations for the next part of the journey.
We have received some lovely emails from friends made while on this journey but fear we may have lost contact (incorrect email address?) with one or two such as Egon & Magdalena in Austria & Christine Biocalti in France - if you are reading this our email address is mercit2africa@yahoo.co.uk .
We hope you all have a very healthy 2009 & that the current financial crisis does not cause you too many problems; as we can live as economically on the road as when at home we do still plan to set off in the spring.

Once our family got wind of the fact we were coming home early things moved fast, an email suggested we might like a couple of weeks in Cyprus! Sounds great we thought, of course there had to be a catch, the new house needed a little tidying and the garden needed a make over.

Once home the ‘holiday’ in Cyprus became top priority and when two one-way tickets for a late night flight to Larnaka were confirmed we had just two days to remove the Mercedes engine and deliver it to a local firm. The work-shop manual gave the impression half a day would be more than enough, suffice to say one and a half days was nearer the mark; with just hours to spare Penny packed our bags and we just made it to the airport. Here we discovered our flight was the last out to Cyprus for the season and there were no more return flights to Humber Airport! Did the family plan to abandon us in Cyprus? There were only 9 passengers so we were all able to stretch out and catch-up on some sleep.

The ‘make-over’ is in fact creating a new garden from scratch; it is going well, but it’s no holiday, though we are enjoying the exciting challenge of gardening on a building site in the dry conditions of Paralimni, thirty odd miles North East of Larnika, and working with a completely different type of plant; at home we have a tiny cactus on the windowsill, smuggled out of the USA in 2,004 in a film canister! Here there will be a dozen or so large specimens in the garden, plus date palms and strelitzia, etc. To-date we have heard nothing of progress concerning the Mercedes engine, mainly because we have been too busy organising household items, gardening tools and over 150 plants; some of which need a mini digger to excavate the rock hard soil and a crane to lift them in to the holes! It has taken a week to track down an internet café in order to send this up-date and catch-up with news from home, though Bill has learned to text and read incoming texts on the mobile (no grandchildren around to do it for us!) so we are not completely out of touch; we have also had a satalite dish installed and the first TV news we saw was that Obama had won the USA election. Since then we seem to have jumbled the TV’s brains and cannot find any programmes except some Arab ones; fortunately we are too tired at the end of the day to worry about entertainment!

Originally we thought two weeks would see the garden done but five looks nearer the mark now, so we may be lucky to have the Mercedes back on the road by Christmas. Hopefully it will be running again just in time for us to do our usual runner over the Christmas holiday period to hide away from all the hype.
Bill & Penny.

Stop press!
Encouraging news concerning the ‘engine make over’; crank in good condition, but needs new piston rings, and a new oil pump plus the usual top end jobs, looks like it will be ready to put back in place by the time we get home, whenever that might be!
Our forecast of five weeks for the garden looks to be nearer the mark, so it is unlikely we shall have the Mercedes back on the road before the New Year!
Garden project going well, though it does rain like hell and produce some magnificent electric storms at times in Cyprus, plus gales to equal those in Devils Canyon USA, which bring an abrupt end to outside work & the plants are not too happy about the wind. Work came to an abrupt end today just as we were enjoying barrowing crushed stone to hold down the visquine weed barrier, all 30 tons of it; and we may need more! What a holiday, but we are enjoying it all; the sun sets at 4.30, it’s dark by 5pm & we are free till sun-up at about 6.30am.

see our files for more pictures...... "2008 November pics"

Latest update now in our files - see 'back into france update' for the text and End of part 1 of Oddwayround for photographs
Penny & Bill

...see our Files for more pics, (October 2008)
Penny
From a minor road west of Perpignan, France, we drove south east and joined the N914 to the Mediterranean coast where we instantly became just one of hundreds of campervans following the tortuous route into Spain. The views were fabulous but the crowds in the little villages were not. Our plan to while away a month or two on the coast was finally aborted, we had already accepted that we really cannot sit around doing nothing, however beautiful the place is; and with the list of jobs to do when we reach home growing by the day we finally agreed to travel north along the Spanish side of the Pyrenees and head for home, either from Santander or back into France and cross from Le Havre or Cherbourg.
Once in Spain quite few changes were noted; cacti loaded with ripe prickly pears covered the hillsides where they were not terraced and growing olives or vines; also the cost of food and fuel dropped, and people were again showing interest in the van which pleased Bill immensely.
Our first overnight stop was on a narrow ledge above a deep valley with a signed walk up to the crest of the hill. We didn’t go right to the top but wandered well up amongst old, unused terracing and some being reinstated. The countryside is very dry and stony with only stunted trees, mostly pines, but next day we turned inland, just south of Girona onto the C25, into entirely different countryside and along roads with masses of viaducts and tunnels as it led across the foothills of the Pyrenees. One lucky overnight stop (that’s a misnomer, we stopped in time for a late breakfast and didn’t leaves till after breakfast next day!) found us right beside a motocross event and below more great walking country with taller pines as well as deciduous trees. This walk was the first time we wished we had taken a compass as the numerous tracks twisted and turned till we were a trifle confused, the only thing to do was retrace our tracks which we managed to do with only one hesitation.
The town of Manresa proved a fortuitous diversion with excellent street parking around the University area and free use of the computers in the Bibliotheca as well as a very he lpful assistant who spoke good English. We decided here that it was time to invest in a good Spanish/English dictionary; especially as everyone was so helpful we felt we should at least make an effort to speak the language.
To avoid the city of Lleida we took to more minor roads, which was quite a relief as the traffic had become very heavy, before picking up the N240 at Binefar where we again camped in the street overnight to enable us to use the local computers. Again the van attracted a great deal of appreciative interest when ever we stopped in small towns along the minor roads. The weather was not good, sometimes rain, sometimes it was just low cloud but we were travelling at a much higher altitude than along the coast, averaging about 500 metres.
On 24th September we stopped to buy bread for breakfast in the little town of Angues and fell in love with the place so again stayed for at least 24 hrs. The first thing that attracted us was the village washing facility which was only built in 1952! They had obviously harnessed a natural spring, and we can vouch for the quality of the water as we filled our water tanks here. Then we discovered the old town buildings, the earliest date we spotted was 1779, the doorways and arches are great, I can see some quilts inspired by these. There are a series of photos of the village on file. Finally on our last wander round the streets we found two ladies sitting in an open doorway doing embroidery, they were really amused to find themselves photographed.
From Angues the route bypasses Huesca and heads north into the mountains again before bearing west towards Pamplona. The road climbs over several passes, with some really steep climbs but excellent roads and the van coped really well, our breakfast stop that day was at 1300metres. It was at that stop that we found the ‘giant’s foot’ protruding from the rocks (see the pics)!
After Pamplona we headed over the tops for France and are amazed to find huge supermarkets at the border packed with French doing their weekend shopping. So prices really are much lower in Spain than France, we hadn’t just imagined it! And the roads are suddenly packed with campervans again, makes us realise we’ve hardly seen one since leaving the Mediterranean coast.
Penny

Bill
How it is that two perfectly sane people like us seem to attract odd balls? (Now I wonder? Penny) Here we are enjoying the peace and quiet of a small Spanish village, when out the corner of my eye I notice “Robert” a greying 75ish chap sauntering towards us, baseball cap atop longish hair, ginger beard going grey, baggy trousers and holding a book in front of him a little like a monk chanting psalms! I thought “time to get behind the safety of the camera lens”. With three or four pretty ordinary photos taken I risked “A Peek”; Penny, silly girl, had only smiled at him, like girls do of course. So there she is trapped against some railings with this gesticulating German, Russian, French, Spanish, English speaking “I’ve been every where man,” intellectual who had escaped with his brother and mother from East to West Germany in the fifties, done his national service with the German army; possibly helped to shoot down a Mig fighter plane, or a Zeppelin, or possibly something like a barrage balloon; was recommended for a medal but settled for three days leave instead! And to cap it all, he, as a Boy Scout, had helped make hay on a Scottish farm! What a character, we have never met anyone who used his hands and arms so expressively, he was on his way to the Bibliotheque, and to our great surprise eventually said, must dash things to do don’t you know!

We really loved both the countryside and the people of Spain and look forward to returning one day, though not to the coast (well perhaps Barcelona as there are several patchwork shops there!).

That’s all for now folks but watch out for another French Blog coming shortly!
Penny & Bill

see photos in our Files (2008 Sept pics)

Penny
France has proved a joy and restored our slightly jaded spirits, we have laughed at our small problems again and enjoyed the many surprises the country has thrown at us, such as supermarkets closing for two hours at lunch time and every shop shut on a Monday, but the wild camping has been excellent and campsites very good and less expensive than we expected.
Our route was a bit of a surprise, we had expected a rather mountainous road from the Rhine Valley towards Vesoul and it was hilly, especially when a bit of wayward map reading took us up into the hills of Alsace (I suspect this may have been a subconscious desire to reach Ste-Marie-aux-Mines where a well known Quilt exhibition is held in September!), but the diversion led to some great little villages and good wild camping with walks up into the wooded hills. On our first night in France we pulled in to a lay-by behind the biggest ‘Exceptional Convoy’ I’ve ever seen, people kept stopping to admire the machinery and talk to us as they thought we were the guardians of the two trucks. The second night we camped in a loggers parking area beside a large forest which yielded plenty of good blackberries for supper. It also bucketed with rain while we were there (stayed a couple of nights) which reminds me we haven’t told you about the ants. When we were cycling round the world we had trouble with ants taking up residence in the frames of our bikes, they were tiny little fellows but had to go as they found their way into our bags and began to eat our clothes. We did not expect to have any similar problems in the camper, other than those brought in on our shoes, but we were wrong. Camping in forestry areas, mostly pine woods, the ants are large and two coloured; they only seem to bite if trapped between shoe and skin – fair enough; but they are not the sort of bed companions one would normally choose so finding a couple scurrying across the sheet is a trifle unnerving, especially when we had been so careful to knock them off our shoes when entering the van. The first time it happened was in Germany, the weather had been exceptionally hot all day, then the heavens opened in the afternoon and our parking area, which we knew was alive with ants, became inundated. We had a brief discussion over supper on how they survive such flooding and thought no more about it until we discovered we had company! How the devil were they getting in? Following them back we found they were coming up beside the engine cover. Braving the rain Bill investigated outside and realised we were parked over a clump of tall grass which reached up to the chassis and they were using this as a highway. We had to move the van to a grassless area and spray the entrance point as well as dealing with all those already exploring the van. But obviously the French ants are even cuter than the German ones because they did not even require the grass to reach the safety of the dry van in heavy rain. Fortunately the ground drained almost as quickly as it had flooded and they much preferred to be outside than in so the problem solved itself.
We were heading roughly south west and from Vesoul took a wide detour around Dijon via Dole and Beaune then on to Autun. The forestry parking areas are excellent, not official campsites, just places where the trucks have loaded timber at some time and local vans often use them as lunch stops. There are always good tracks into the hills and we have followed tracks that are obviously used for motorcycle events; another that led to a tiny hilltop mausoleum with fantastic views; and yet another that led to a Keep Fit Trail! Sometimes the area has been so lovely we’ve stayed a day or two but to our amazement we have never been joined by any other campervans yet there were many on the road and less obvious campsites than we expected. It was not till we reached Figeac that we discovered where they were all going; first we spent a day in the town car park and noted the road busy with campers; then we moved to the town campsite for a few days (mainly to do some serious washing (!), but there were virtually no campervans on the site, where were they all stopping at night? On our last night, we were in town about a week mainly doing patch working things, we moved to the top of the town to a large car park and there they all were, shoulder to shoulder, by the dozen!
Before reaching Figeac we stumbled on another great find, the town of Aubusson – the Tapestry capital of France; not patchwork and quilting but still thread work and extremely interesting especially as there were both historical items and modern design workshops to see and visit.
In Figeac we had a whole week mostly doing patchworking type things, visiting shops and local classes, as well as visiting family; and from there we continued south to the city of Narbonne, for another fabric orientated stay. A short visit north to the Centre European Patchwork at Salles d’Aude (a village on the canal Robine) and our friend Marie who, as usual has a great display of work from around the world (and more fabric). While wandering around this village we spotted a sign on the end wall of a house, above first floor level, stating that this was the level the water reached in Nov 1999; Marie told us the River Aude had flooded but only as far as the canal so their property had been safe. Apparently that was the reason for all the new flood defences we had noted.
From Salles we did a loop north and west to avoid Narbonne and Perpignon and discovered some really fantastically beautiful hill country, completely different to the hills farther north which are so densely green, this country is dry and stony with every tiny patch of levelish soil growing a few grapes, the rest just rough scrub, impressive towering rocks, caves and almost dried-up rivers that disappear underground for long stretches.
Then we hit the coast with masses of tourists, nose to tail campervans (the caravan has almost disappeared from the French roads), hairpin bends and nowhere to stop apart from a tiny patch if land on a steep hillside. But even there we found a trail heading up in to the hills. And today we have crossed the border in to Spain.
Penny.

Penny has been badgering me to “Do a bit for the Fre nch blog!”
Well I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, and to date have not come up with very much, “’Er indoors has just about said it all!” After Russia, Ukraine, and one or two notable exceptions in Hungary and Austria, things have just not been the same; the few people who have asked how we got on in those dangerous countries seem quite disappointed to hear we had not been robbed of everything we owned; and to hear that Russians and Ukrainians actually laugh a lot has been almost too much to bare for some!
And the car’s no longer the star! Even here in France where there are still a lot of older cars we have passed through almost unnoticed, but I tell a lie a jogger nearly jogged out of his trainers earlier today while waving wildly to us.
Like back home in the UK the sighting of a policeman patrolling the streets is a rare occurrence, and to our surprise also on the roads. Whatever happened to the comforting sound of one of the boys in blue enquiring “Now, now sir, are we in a hurry to get home to the wife, or something?” (hope I’m not tempting providence here). (Penny: they are more likely to ask if we have a problem than accuse us of speeding!)
Last but not least, borders and border guards; since the advent of the removal of border restrictions within the EC, movement between member countries is simple, in fact too damn easy, anyone can come and go as they please. This may seem fine to liberal minded people, but it seems to me that we should at least have some idea when we are entering a country that has a different set of cultural rules (however European they claim to be)! Eventually we may well finish up just a hotch-potch of nations that have no idea of their heritage. MEP’s take note; many of us do not like what you are signing-up to just so you can stay on the gravy train!
Bill

Penny
Wow!
I must add that today is the first time we have known we were entering another country since the border guards took the van to pieces on entering Hungary; today there was a clear sign welcoming us to Spain; and an instant reduction in the quality of the road! However they did improve once clear of the ‘border’.
We’ve seen some fabulous butterflies on this trip and sitting here in a Spanish garage car park we’ve just spotted a beautiful swallowtail on the herbs growing wild around the edge. We also spotted a truck driver collecting something from the neighbouring field, his carrier bag seemed pretty heavy and full quite quickly; so, short of something for pudding tonight, Bill went foraging only to find he’d been collecting snails!

see our Files for some pics (2008 August pics part 2)

There was a terrific electric storm on our last night in Austria and we were camped underneath those mountains in the pics with “The Walk on the Wild Side”! Neither of us said anything as the rain lashed down but I’m sure both thought, at least fleetingly, of all those cracks in the rocks above! However we both slept well and set off next morning at 8am. Somewhere in the middle of the first tunnel we entered Germany and the first sight on leaving the tunnel was a couple of fields of Llamas! Later in the day we were parked in a lay-by when another old Mercedes van drove by, a much larger version than ours and not quite so old but also converted into a campervan. It slowed down and backed into the lay-by and back past us, the lady driver giving us the “once over” before stopping. She pulled up in front and came back to meet us, on her own, wearing a beautiful sari. We still assumed there must be a partner, perhaps asleep in the van but no Sylvia is travelling alone in that huge great van. We spent some time chatting before she continued on her way to the next town to collect her mail from home, and where we planned to be next day for some emailing.
Next day we met up again and she was distraught, she wished she had stayed in the lay-by with us as during the drive into town she had had a small bump with another car and the other driver had just driven off. She had reported it to the police but was really desperate to apologise.
Within the next few days we found that several towns have large campervan parking areas, a bit like the towns in France that have free campsites to encourage visitors to spend time (and money) in their town. This proved a bonus as both campsites and lay-bys were a little thin on the ground along our route.
We had originally arranged to meet a quilter near Landshut, which we reached on Bill’s birthday 11th August; but we seemed to have lost contact with her in the last few weeks. We hope she is well. We met two lovely ladies as we parked in Landshut who told us the town has some beautiful old buildings and we would have spent some time wandering the streets only Bill’s sandal fell to pieces as we walked from the internet cafe. Now those who have been following the blog closely may remember that we lost one of his other pair of shoes back in Hungary (I had left it hanging on the back to dry after he went paddling in some flood water). Bill being Bill he would not replace the shoes back in Hungary so now he has a problem. As we return to the van to effect temporary repairs we glance in the windows of the shoe shops and he nearly has a fit at the prices. So now he is wearing a pair of sandals with one strapped together with gaffa tape!
We have spotted a few wind turbines here in Germany but many of the huge long barns have their roofs covered in solar panels. We have also seen some interesting road kills which look a bit like mink, plus one fox. There was also a wild deer grazing a field edge the other day and there are many shooting hides on field edges so there must be plenty of deer around.
On Thursday 14th we parked in a lay-by on the road 16 after a long and tortuous diversion during which time we could not see how we would return to the planned route and which led through numerous small villages and towns which must love having all the commercial traffic thundering through the main street. Anyway the lay-by was also a car park for a nature reserve and in the early evening I went for an exploratory walk following one of their signed routes which should have led to a circular route back to the van. Well it didn’t and the only wild life I spotted was a Jay; however what I did find was a small building with PUBLIC COMPUTER written on the outside. Of course! That’s just what you would expect to find in a Nature Reserve, isn’t it? On closer inspection it turned out to have internet connections too. Unfortunately I did not have our USB with me or any money for that matter, but next time I go for a walk I’ll be prepared!
We are still following the River Danube and will be right across Germany, almost into France, and the mosquitos are biting well here. Penny

Bill
From the moment we entered Russia “The car’s been the star!” When ever and where ever we stopped, be it in a market square, village or town centre, traffic lights, even the odd time the police pulled us over, out came the mobile phone cameras, even old ladies and their husbands walked up and murmured words of affection for the venerable machine. The praise went on throughout Ukraine; Hungarians were a little more conservative but still full of admiration for our durability. In Austria the old enthusiasm returned especially from motor cyclists, but then motor cyclists are a breed apart, nothing, not even torrential rain can dampen their enthusiasm for life on the edge. Nearing the Mercedes home land we could feel the tension mounting, what sort of a welcome would await our van? Many of the admirers in Austria were Germans but we did not expect flags and banners, just a quiet nod of recognition from other Mercedes owners and perhaps the odd word in favour of things old and loved. As we left Austria we were mobbed by a lovely family, a young father and three enthusiastic sons in a VW camper heading back home to Germany, we thought that’s a good start. Well it was almost the finish as well, it took three days before we met Sylvia a young German girl driving a very large 1977 Mercedes 406 campervan, a day later we met two families briefly at a service station and later in Landshut two old ladies who fell head over heels in love with the van and wanted to join our expedition! Other than these three brief meetings we motored through Germany almost unnoticed, odd, has there been a football world cup final upset that we have missed?
Bill

Penny again.
We crossed from Germany into France over the River Rhine with an amazing sense of relief on the 17th August. We had not felt comfortable in Germany, the weather had deteriorated, everything was so appallingly tidy, and the failure of the quilting contacts did not help either. We did eventually hear from our contact with an explanation that their holiday plans had changed. We did feel that we might have enjoyed the country more if we had been on the bikes as there are cycle tracks everywhere, and they are very busy too with both local cyclists and tourists. But the trails are as immaculate as the villages, so are the riders, it wouldn’t do to have a plastic carrier bag dangling from the rear carriers! But we do realise that we did not really give the country a chance.
All for now folks.
Penny