Route planning and preparation

 

We decided upon three legs across three continents starting by driving from London to Singapore. All us have completed the Peking to Paris rally (Nigel has done it twice) and many extreme rallies besides, so the planning and logistics were manageable. Unfortunately war, pestilence and disease were the first problems to hit our plans.

 

Wars in Armenia/ Azerbaijan and a coup in Myanmar began to make our planned route through Europe, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, China (Tibet), Nepal, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore problematic even for determined adventurers. And then pestilence struck with the arrival of Covid-19 making travel challenging and entry to China (Tibet) impossible.

 

With no idea how long the challenges around Covis-19 would remain we organised the ’Ultimate Overland UK Coastal rally” on which friends and family joined us as we discovered once again the beauty and hospitality of our wonderful country. 4500km around Britain over three weeks was an excellent trial run even if it wasn’t quite what we originally planned. And weren’t we lucky to have done the trip exposing electrical issues in Nigel’s car, a cracked manifold in the Rolls and about 10 miles from home the second Lagonda’s clutch release bearing ceased  completely making progress impossible and offering no alternative but to take the car straight to the garage for serious repairs! And still the pestilence continued and still our best laid plans came to naught.

 

By 2021 our commitment remained as solid as ever but the Singapore leg was impossible  and we started to look at our remaining two legs of the challenge, the America’s (Ushuaia  to New York) and Africa (Cape Town to London). As countries began to open up our optimism once again rose and we turned our attention to South America. Countries were opening up, they were relatively stable  and Nigel and Chris had first hand rallying experience in the South of Argentina and Chile.

 

As we entered 2022 the route was set, although totally flexible and the major challenges were being addressed. Logistics of shipping the cars, carnet’s, insurance, vaccinations, visa’s, car preparation, one by one the problems were getting sorted.

 

There remained three significant challenges, firstly tyres and secondly both Costa Rica and Nicaragua do not permit right hand drive cars on their roads. The tyres were a very significant challenge since there was no way we were going to make 22,000km on one new set of tyres and two spares which were on the cars. A simple calculation showed that we would need a complete set for each car by the time we reach Lima in Peru, but since the right tyres aren’t available anywhere in South America how do we get them to Lima? A casual remark from our Lagonda maestro, David Ayre, provided the answer. He suggested that we try Aston Martin. (who purchased Lagonda in 1946) or Rolls Royce.  The Rolls dealership is in Brazil but the Aston Martin dealership is in Lima. A quick email resulted in an immediate offer of support and today we sit with two pallets of tyres sitting in Lima. I have always said that on such expeditions “our cars are our passports” and it never ceases to amaze me how kind, supportive and generous people are of such extraordinary adventures. This has never been proved more so than by our dear friends at Aston Martin, Peru and their logistics company Premier Brands. I had absolutely no idea how complex the importation of tyres is in Peru and will be eternally grateful to the persistence and determination of Carlos Locau in getting them there. In parallel to addressing the challenge of tyres, if we are to avoid trucking them across the countries, we needed to find a way of driving the cars through Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In Nicaragua we found the fantastic support of her excellency Guissell Morales-Echaverry, Nicaragua’s ambassador in London. Her original enquires to the traffic department solicited a negative response but her refusal to accept such an answer resulted in agreement to issue a special exemption and the offer from the Nicaraguan traffic police to escort us across the country. Once again our cars have proved to be our passports.  As I write we haven’t yet got an answer for Costa Rica but our senior in-country contacts and support has grown and we are confident that when we arrive in early April permission will have been obtained. Significant challenges faced square on, solutions found, the cars prepared, carnets issued, powers of attorney obtained allowing their temporary importation in go Argentina and by mid November they were delivered to CARS UK for delivery to Ushuaia. The team is scheduled to arrive on the 26^th Jan and the cars should be there o 23^rd.

 

Tracking the Cap San Artimissio as it nervously visited various European ports became a daily habit. Finally it set sail for Buenos Aires and it became increasingly clear that it would arrive in plenty of time for the two containers to be trans-shipped down to Ushuaia on the MV Agentinio 11. Tracking the MV Argentinio 11 showed us that the cars were on the manifest and would arrive at “the bottom of the world” on the 23^rd January. The team and their co-drivers assembled at Heathrow to catch their planes to Argentina. The adventure was about to start.