We aim to spend five months driving over 30,000km and travelling through 18 countries before we reach Singapore. From there we’ll ship our vehicle to Darwin to complete the final leg of the journey to Sydney.



Wednesday 23 June 2010

Out of our comfort zone


Woo hoo! We are out of France, Switzerland and Austria and we are currently in a campsite in small town in Slovenia called Bled.

I have to say that our first week driving 1375 miles through three countries has been very challenging and we have been on a steep learning curve. Not only do we have to cover a certain amount of miles per day but we are also having to learn how to live out of a small campervan. It may sound easy, however during the first few days it took us four hours to get me into my chair, eat breakfast, pack our belongings before we hit the road and the normal day-to-day task of eating, cleaning etc has to be carried out at the final destination, which consumes more hours of the day and we seem to end up going to bed very close to either side of midnight. Added to this the driving has also been very difficult. The steep right-hand camber on the European roads makes me lean off to the right and without any trunk muscles to hold me up I have had to wedge my head into my headrest to prevent me leaning out to far. This position means my shoulders and neck fatigue after about one and a half hours of driving and I have to pull over. What is more, Miranda is heavily laden and with the knowledge of how many miles she has to cover I have been driving very cautiously. All of which means that the going has been slow.

Chrissy has been amazing. My challenge of driving has been matched by Chrissy’s challenge of helping me, plus navigating and keeping us fed and watered. Despite this challenge though you’ll never hear a grumbled word - even if we’ve been on the go all day and we don’t go to sleep until after midnight.

We have seen some beautiful sights on our journey and we’ve met some great people, which we’ll update you about shortly.

2 comments:

  1. the road camber in Australia mate!, its only 3% on most of them, so won't be a problem. Just gotta watch out for those bloomin roos!

    Well done in getting to Bled. Sounds like the scenery in Austria was amazing. Keep going!!!

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  2. So you set out to travel to Rome… and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan… and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.

    -Loreena McKennitt

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