2nd Update on the 2007 Peking Paris Challenge
June 18th, day 23, a day-off in Moscow
PART I
Yesterday we had an easy ride from Niz. Novgorod, at just over 400 Km. The usual mix of reasonable road surfaces intermingled with appalling and in most cases totally unexpected series of potholes…
Tomorrow we are off to St. Petersburg, followed by another day-off there.
The rallying side of the event has been totally absent in Russia. Virtually all the time controls were changed to passage controls, and all you have to do is to clock in at the start of the day and then again at arrival. The time allowed is sufficiently generous, so unless you break down you are safe from road penalties.
We are told that once out of Russia and on the Baltic States there will be timed test stages on gravel forest roads and even a city circuit. Can’t wait to get there...
With so little to report on the sporting front, how about a short round up of some of the characters we meet on the event? The other competitors and the rally officials of course make an important part of our experiences, if for no other reason at least because we travel together for so many days and thus get to know most of them reasonable well. But the occasional encounter with all sorts of locals and travelers has so much charm…
Take a look of this amazing couple we met on the Mongolian side of the China-Mongolia border. He is French she is English, they left London a year ago on a world riding Tour planned to take up to 5 years…They were having trouble entering China on a bicycle (of all places !) and planned to follow with Korea, then Japan, etc, etc… If you plan to travel light, this is the example to follow.
Or watch how easy it is for my wife Maria to get on the best of terms with every road side café attendant in Russia…
Or better still, look at this charming little fellow, sitting on the pavement and wearing a sort of bandana, fascinated by the chrome and glitter of our team mates Phillip and Yvonne Haslam’s 1950 Chevrolet Bel Air…
Or finally take my friend Sebastian Welch, whom I met for the first time a year ago as the organizer of the AMOC Le Mans Tour (and hadn’t seen since), who now did exactly the same route we did out of China (i.e. the west route through Mongolia into Russia) only taking twice as long, but … on a tiny Austin Seven!!!
He was here today at the same Cosmos Hotel and he remembered I told him then that he was crazy to attempt that. How wrong I was… Well done Sebastian!
More to come on Part II… Don’t go away…
3rd Update on the 2007 Peking Paris Challenge
June 28th in Koblenz, only 2 more days to go
PART III
With the competitive part of the rally now over, the whole structure of the event became clear. It featured 5 totally different sections:
- China was just the start, with panache and glitter but only like a Sunday afternoon car shakedown;
- Mongolia was the real thing, the cream of the cream, and the classifications at the end of those incredible 6 days really determined the rest of the event. Far too rough by everybody’s opinions, and not requiring much driving skills, just a bullet proof car (or should I say a washboard and solid rock track proof car), but at least some really competitive stuff;
- Russia was something we had to cross to get to the Baltic States. Not a single competitive stage (or “timed sections” as they are called here) during those long 2 weeks, only a long and fastidious route west, avoiding potholes and “enjoying” Russian “hospitality” and the “quality” of the local service standards…
- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland really did make up for it, and the timed sections were plenty, varied and a real driver’s joy. Pity there was so few days of them. And in my case, pity that we could only enjoy the first 2 days, since one cylinder’s rings gave up and we had to miss the stages on the last 2 days.
- And Germany and France of course, are again just a way to get to Paris, to a well deserved finish.
So there you are. Some would say too many long days for such a sporadic driving pleasure, but the whole event is unique and its magic is not confined to the competitive sections… It is the camaraderie, the long days together sharing misfortunes and small victories; the unforgettable scenery where you would probably never otherwise had gone and most probably will never return again, the immense pleasure of having done it, the innumerable stories to remember and the experience of solving the unexpected.
The day-off in Gdansk presented the crews with heavy rain and strong winds during much of the day. Those who had urgent jobs to do on their cars (who hadn’t?) had to do it under atrocious weather. No wonder some 5 or 6 cars were virtually “inside” the hotel reception area (occupying the narrow covered area in front of the main door, that is) while a starter was being repaired on a bar table…
Our much expected Holts “piston seal” arrived by TNT from England at 3 pm and Peter was soon ready to try it on our number 2 cylinder. For those who do not know Peter Banham, I have to say that all I had heard about his skills and attitude fall way short of reality. Not only he is always ready to help with a smile but also he is immensely talented in solving up the most difficult problems to get a car going and is always optimistic about the the available options and the expected outcome. Here he was a few weeks ago trying to fix a “rebel” dynamo on the Eberhard’s Swiss-Portuguese Silver Ghost:
Well, Peter had not used that stuff for some 20 years but suggested we try it and thanks to my friend David Miller I was able to get it in 24 hours.
He applied it following the instructions, but at first we could not detect any increase in compression. A second application on our (concave) piston showed marked improvement, and today we were able to cruise comfortably at 60-65 miles per hour. Still a rough and unbalanced engine, with little torque, struggling when required to go uphill, but at least that plug is firing and a big improvement over our 3.5 Kg compression figure.
More tomorrow, I have to go.
