We did it

We couldn't sign off without a photo of the lovely trophy put together by trip organiser Clemo, and Splooge in what may be his final resting place in Tallinn (he's probably sitting on bricks already!).

Bye bye Splooge!

At Helsinki port, being handed over to Rolf from Germany, for all of six hours. Splooge took an exception to being driven by a foreigner and spat his guts out no less than five minutes earlier. He was towed onto the ferry to Estonia!

Happier times in Rovaniemi, Finland, being cleaned of snow by Jack and Sylvi, and getting a little boost from our trusty yellow battery pack.

Amidst the mountains and frozen lakes of Norway. Now that's some scenery.

On the ferry on the road from Tromso to Nordkapp, on one of those fjordy things.

Someone else's problem

He may have been at the end of a tow rope, but Splooge has now been handed over to Estonia's only rehab charity. We're sure the tyres, stereo, battery etc will be worth something. So now all we have to worry about is drinking beer and flying home. Tallinn seems to be ideally designed for the former. Beer by the litre...

Landed in Talinn

Just a quick post to say we've landed in Talinn. Splooge made it too - well, sort of, but he's not going anywhere else. More later

All the way up and down again

We've nearly done it - two nights ago we saw the sunset at Nordkapp, since then we've been driving through snowy Finland (after pretty much unbroken sunshine through Norway).
Splooge should just about make it to Estonia. His little old battery doesn't like the cold and won't take a charge, so today we had to make an emergency replacement.
We've got as far as Helsinki tonight and tomorrow it's just a short ferry trip across the Baltic to Talinn and we'll give him away to the charity on Monday...
...unless we sell him to Gunther from Berlin, who has fallen in love with Splooge and has offered to buy him and give his Fiat Panda to charity instead. It's very tempting.
Photos tomorrow :)

Snow monkeys

We've arrived in Tromso, capital city of the Norwegian Arctic, at the Thon Hotel Polar, which has lovely free internet access.
Yesterday we crossed into the Arctic Circle, and it's quite chilly out, though toasty inside the car - Alex has a bit of a tan from all the sunshine.
Splooge is running nicely, although his battery was a bit cold this morning and needed a jump from our friends the Tellytubbies. On the whole, though, cool thin air seems to suit him and we're getting more from three-and-a-half cylinders than we did a couple of days ago. We're even using less fuel, which bizarrely is getting cheaper as we go north.
The Norwegian scenery is stunningly beautiful: wide, dark fjords shouldered by steep snowy mountains, windy roads around the frozen inland lakes that go on for miles, long tunnels through the mountains, and cute wooden houses everywhere. The roads are all clear so far, though some of our trip-mates have been warned for speeding, which is very easy because the Norwegian speed limit is 80kph on most roads - that's about 50mph!
Tromso is apparently a big party town, though at 9 quid a pint I think we'll be 'pre-loading' tonight, as the party poopers call it!
Tomorrow we push on to Nordkapp, via a couple of short ferry journeys, which have been an unexpected treat and plretty cheap by Norwegian standards. Top of the world, ma!

Scandi scamps

Chugaboom - or Splooge to his friends - has made it to Oslo. He still sounds like the fastest lawnmower on the planet and we'll be making regular grease injections around the front wheels, but we're getting on. Anyway, here are two pictures - a lovely vista over the Swedish fjords (it was for me, you can have a view of Splooge's bum), and Sylvi with chief monkey Jack near the town of Monkeydal.
We've had some big drives already, arriving in Copenhagen at 2am after a day hunting for the vital grease injector (which we found at the only supermarket in Germany that doesn't take British plastic money).
Of yeah, it's getting chilly. We had a hailstorm in Sweden today.

New boots?

Today's repair and maintenance session had mixed results - the oil and filter have been changed, but the offside CV boot is in a bad way.

First up, Dad and I drained the oil and swapped out the oil filter, then replaced the old gunge with a mix of 5W40 and 15W40 that should be more suitable for the cold weather ahead. It certainly runs better with something more like oil running through the engine and gearbox.

While the sump was draining, we took a look at the brakes and CV joints. The brakes look like they've been replaced, and the driver's side CV joint looks like it's been recently regreased. The offside must have been overlooked, for the boot is badly split - it's the obvious source of of a low whine I noticed on the motorway this morning. 

What are the options? I should replace it, but that would be expensive with only 10 days to go. The alternative is to pick up some super Duct Tape on Monday morning and repair the boot, then refill it with grease and hope the repair holds. I've got to get a new wing mirror and air filter anyway - just hope there's a decent motor parts store open in Wolverhampton on Monday morning.

Sunday's a bulbs day - fog lamps, sidelights and rear lights. Then a vacuum to get all the straw out.

Smooth runner?

We've had the car for a couple of weeks now and it's a pretty decent runner with just 41,000 miles on the clock when I picked it up.
The orange velour interior is a highlight - and Juan's amazing paint job!
It's spent all of its life on the Isle of Man, so it must have gone around a fair few times! So far I've had to replace the main headlight unit, fitted winter tyres and a decent stereo (which only just fits the tiny space they allowed for radios 30 years ago).
I've got to have a fiddle with the ignition cut-off so it starts reliably, replace the filters, wipers and spark plugs, and change the filthy Brent crude which is currently running around the engine.
So it's off to the warmth and wide variety of spanners offered by garage de papa this Bank Holiday weekend.
That's me and Juan with the car before I set off from the Isle of Man.

On the run again

The Monkey Runners are on the run again in 2010.

This time we're joining the Northern Lights Challenge, from London to Talinn, via Amsterdam (oh yeah!), Copenhagen, Trondheim, Nordkapp (the most Northerly town in continental Europe), and Helsinki. So from bouncing across the desert we'll be skidding over snow-covered roads.

We've been offered an (almost) fully functional 1981 Austin Allegro by Juan McGuinness and Team Traa Dy Liooar, which Alex will be picking up from the Isle of Man in two weeks. It already has a wicked paint job, which we'll be ruining with some stickers very soon.

Hopefully we won't need quite so much crap to survive this trip, and there won't be any camping for a start when the average temperature will be going down with every mile.