Tomorrow is the first day of the next great car adventure with Penny.
I fly to Bangkok to meet the rest of the group and start the clearance of my car through customs on Wednesday morning ready for the planned departure on Saturday morning.
I’ll try and send out a post with Pics every couple of days once we are on the road at the weekend.
Here is the plan!
We head north from Bangkok in Thailand crossing through Loas up to the Chinese border. Heading north in China till we turn left to travel around the Taklanman desert to Kasghar in western China before crossing in to the Stan’s.
We enter Kyrgyzstan for one day before crossing Tajikistan on the Parmir highway and the Wakhan Corridor along the Northern Afghanistan border then off across Uzbekistan and Kazakstan into Russia.
Early plans had us crossing the Ukraine but this was all changed; and now we are going to stay in Russia and across Belarus into Poland to head north through Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to re-enter Russia to visit St Petersburg before crossing into Finland to finish in Helsinki.
This should all take 60 days!
Once we arrive in Helsinki I’ll decide where to from there. If Penny is still going very well and I feel she’ll make the trip to the UK, I’m heading off from Helsinki with Reg and Mitchell Toohey and their car, back to the UK to put Penny away in a friends barn till our next adventure!!!
Here is the makeup of our group on this crazy adventure from Bangkok to Helsinki…
Reg Toohey and his son Mitchell will be traveling in a 2014 Toyota Landcruiser station wagon so they are traveling in luxury
Peter and Sue Wilson will be traveling in a 1970’s Peugeot 504.
Frank Bird and Ross Oakman are traveling in Frank’s latest Toy which is a 1939 Willys body mounted on a Mazda BT 50 chassis with a Holden 202 motor (Frank likes his holden motors).
Garry and Joanne Williams along with Ross’s wife Belinda will be traveling a 1990’s 100 series Toyota Landcruiser.
Maurie Smith and myself will be in Penny; my 1923 23/60 Vauxhall from many trips across the globe!
How this great adventure from Bangkok to Helsinki came about for me.
In late 2013, I was speaking to Ross Oakman and Frank Bird and they told me about a plan to drive from Hanoi to Helsinki in August 2014 with a small group of friends and asked if I was interested in joining them. This soon became Bangkok to Helsinki when we found that we couldn’t drive right hand drive cars in Vietnam anymore.
I immediately said I was very keen and would do the trip in Penny my trusty 1923 Vauxhall that has carried James, Julie and I to many far away places. I discussed it with Julie to see if she was able to join me on the trip but alas, she was unable to join me due to her training for Bhutan, so I decided to look for someone to accompany me on the 60 day journey.
After lots of too-ing and thro-ing with different people, I decided I was going to do the trip on my own. In late April, Maurie Smith a friend of Ross and Frank’s, didn’t have anyone to go with him in his car, so he decided to leave his car in OZ and travel with me in Penny.
