Start Day is upon us!

The first meeting of the group was on Thursday afternoon for the police talk on driving in China. For the best explanation of this hilarious talk visit Julie’s blog http://juliestephenson.net/three-golden-rules-for-driving-in-china/

If you read Julies blog you will question if we travel in the same car some days as we see things through very different eyes.

Yesterday was car collection day so the long awaited anticipation and anxiousness was over, as we got loaded on to buses to the warehouse.

We were scheduled to go on the early bus to the warehouse.

As we all streamed in to the warehouse like a bunch of kids heading to the tree on Christmas morning the excitement was high.

The reason we got the early bus became obvious with all the cars parked in neat rows and Penny in the front row like a naughty kid at school.

After taking some photos Penny started on the push of the button and we were on our way to the first Fuel Station marked on the route map.

Julie was apprehensive and worried about the navigation but got us to the fuel and beyond to the hotel car park without a hitch.

We were the first at the Fuel and before we had pumped the 160 litres to fill Penny about 20 fellow travellers had queued for Fuel.

This fuel queuing is caused from having to ship the cars with minimum fuel in the tanks.

The rest of the day was spent sort out luggage generally faffing about for us till the garden party hosted by the official timekeeper for the event “Frederique Constant”. The afternoon was less leisurely for some with some serious tinkering taking place to make last minute adjustment and repairs including drain fuel tanks after mix up and cars getting filled with diesel.

Saturday morning we work to a very very clear Beijing and was a day of Scrutineering and even more tinkering ready for the start at 8.00 am Sunday.

Once the Scrutineering was completed with ticks in all the right boxes the Navigators collected the rally packs with Route books which they had been asking about ever since there arrival in Beijing.