At my sister's suggestion to alleviate boredom we played the yellow car game. I lost.

GOPR0169.ogv Size: 80M

We've just reached the Czech Republic after spending a very pleasant evening and morning in Dresden with Kai's friend Felix. Curry wurst was a bit disappointing, think sausages swimming in slightly spicy tomato ketchup, but Felix's traditional German aloo gobi for dinner and cold meat and boil egg breakfast was excellent.

As Kai mentioned in the previous post our first stop was with his sister Jutta and two other Amy Winehouse tribute acts in West Germany. Jutta proved more observant than the two of us noticing almost immediately that our Dunlop sticker, provided my my creative flatmate Larry, was spelt slightly unusually, with an extra "p" coming after the "Dun".

We've been using a TomTom so far, and while it's very convenient I dislike them intensely. It seems to me they remove all sense of where you are and where you're going. The maps don't run out until at least Turkey

Apparently you cannot use foreign bank cards in Iran. I wish I'd brought some pounds with me as now I will be charged twice, once to withdraw the money elsewhere and again to exchange within Iran.

Talking of Iran, we're already finding the car quite hot, Kai's thermometer reading around 27C and the air from the vents seems to be constantly warm, although maybe that's just the ambient temperature.

• Miles: 798.4
• Time: 2 days, 23 hours
• McDonald's visits: 2
• Accidents: 0

Over and out.

Jamie and I set off from Goodwood yesterday. What stress.

I moved several bags of my stuff down to West Sussex via Victoria and luckily a friend was around to help with the move!

I met with Larry and Jamie at Shoreham-by-Sea and the next morning Larry thankfully helped cleaned the car. He designed the our team "Geekout" logo and a whole bunch of delightful stickers for our car.

When we eventually got to Goodwood via Google Navigate which took us to the horse race course via some odd country lanes, the car looked a bit plain. Though whilst Jamie and I were registering et al, Larry applied the decals. Nice.

I was super stressed since I thought we might be off as early as 2pm and my parents said they were running late and would probably arrive around er.. 2pm. I told them to bring some BBQ stuff, but as it transpired, no BBQs are allowed at Goodwood circuit, despite the fact there was only one catering van and quite a large number of people. I became stressed & starved. Not a good start, though my parents did see my off with heartfealt hugs.

So we set off for the Chunnel and after the buzz of going around the circuit, Jamie almost hit a car as we were pulling out (he was looking the wrong way)!

So there were quite a few Mongol ralliers on the road to cross over to France. Lots of waves and good spirits. We met a solo Belgian driver named Rick who also has a CB radio. We chatted on the way to Folkstone which really helped pass the time. There are quite a lot of ralliers, though I would estimate only 5-10% have CBs, so I doubt we are going to get much use out of of it.

350 miles or so later we arrived at JHQ via Queens Avenue. A British base my sister was celebrating her last day on. Her and a couple of friends were dressed up as Amy Winehouse and doing a tribute. Her friend Paul seemed genuinely interested in our rally and we chatted for a bit and wound down with a German beer.

The next day we woke early as Jutta had an early flight back to England, so we left too. We said our goodbyes in the rain and now we are headed off to Dresden to stay with a very good friend Felix from India. Actually he's German, but we met in India.