Well just a few days after Ray Coventry of the Arsenal Foundation kindly donated Arenal Shirts for the Children of Mongolia, Ray has kindly given us a letter to help us through the border posts on route.
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Team
Arsenal Foundation – Shirts for the Kids
A massive Thank You to the Arsenal Foundation and in particular Ray Coventry for providing us with these Fantastic Arsenal shirts! Don’t they look just great! (We’ve got more than 2!)
We will travel 10,000 miles through 18 countries to deliver these Arsenal shirts to the kids at the Blue Skies Ger Village, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia which is run by the wonderful people at Christina Noble Children’s Foundation. These unfortunate kids, a combination of street children and orphans have had a very difficult start in life. We hope that by delivering these Arsenal shirts, and then embarking on a game of footie, we will bring some smiles to their faces and something to remember for a long time.
Pack your shin pads Shaun & Peter!
(Yes, it is highly likely I will pin a ‘Kick Me’ to Shaun’s back but keep it under your hat!)
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Visa vie
Ok so it’s not really a competition (or fight!) getting the Visas sorted, but it sure feels like it pressure wise. We’ve got to get Visas for 6 Countries.
They are also pretty costly things, so please please donate if you haven’t already and pass this on to your friends and family!
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Children’s Liver Disease Foundation
Once Peter was on board, we then got in contact with the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation for an Authorisation Letter allowing us to raise money, and here it is…
The very people who had been so helpful to Peter and his Family when he had been diagnosed with liver cancer at a young age and taken part in ground breaking surgery, with his Father, Mark, donating a lobe of his liver as a ‘Living Donor’. This groundbreaking surgery has made it possible for Peter to join us on our mad choice of adventure – The Mongol Rally!
Many thanks to CLDF for sending us some tshirts and other items we will use in the lead up and on the rally itself to raise funds for them.
We have two other Charities, Cool Earth & Christina Noble Children’s Foundation, so please DONATE what you can to help us and our Charities!
Welcome on board Peter
It is with great excitement I can finally announce that my nephew, Peter Randall is joining the team for our adventure to Mongolia!
You can read more about Peter on our About Us page, but here is a brief rundown. He’s studying Celtic & Anglo-Saxon stuff at Aberdeen Uni and is a keen Aberdeen F.C. ‘Don’. His chosen charity is the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation, for whom he has a special affinity after being diagnosed with liver cancer at a young age and being part of ground breaking surgery, his Father, Mark, donating half his liver as a ‘Living Donor’. The charity helped him and his family through this ordeal and we’d like to help them by raising funds through this charitable event.
We have two other charities we are supporting, please check out the Charities page.
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Help us raise funds for our Charities and complete the Mongol Rally!
A bit of Snow and a new Team Member
Well we took some time out over the holiday season and hope you all had a good Christmas and a Happy New year. The car managed to survive this brief snow episode without issue (hurray!).
We also have some very exciting 2017 news about a new Team Member joining us very soon – more news to follow once we get together his bio and photos for the about us page and his choice of charity and his football team! Keep checking back with us for news.
Gallery now open
We have finally recovered from our Norway Road Trip and are now happy to report the Gallery now open.
Do please go take a look and we hope you enjoy them.
We may post some more over time and will of course keep you informed if we do.
Never Borred
No not a spelling mistake, up early next morning as we had another possibly great Viking site to view in the town of Borre. So early in fact, they weren’t open yet!
What they found here was some 50 different sized burial mounds dating from between 600 and 1000 AD. They also had a wonderfully reconstructed Tall hall.
Inside the wonderful museum and the staff gave us a local history lesson about the area. This got us interested in going to look at a mound in Tonsberg where a Viking burial ship was found. This was one of the ships now on show at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.
Unfortunately all that is the left is the mound of grass and earth. Along the short walk from the road however they have these little guide points which tell you the story. It was such a nice day and we felt genuinely enlightened!
This was to be our last stop in Norway as we were taking the Horten to Moss ferry. Once we reached Moss, we then drove south to Uddevalla to let Shaun get his train back home. Shaun clearly emotional was welling up, so I quickly jumped back in the car and headed back towards London!
Two Stave Churches, Sun is out!
Well, it was a pretty nippy nights sleep, but what wonderful weather we woke up to. Luckily for us too there was a petrol station literally right next door to the hotel to give us a full tank to keep heading towards Kristiansand. Heddal has a Stave church and appeared to be on route, so we headed for it.
We just had to stop here and take in some of the view.
Don’t worry – we didn’t really break down, and as were driving along we just stumbled upon this Stave church in the most idyllic setting.
Truly remarkable how these things stay around for so long made of wood. There was a museum nearby, sadly closed.
So back in the car, and on we went to the Stave church we knew about!
This is Heddal Stave church and as you can see, she is very grand indeed. But unfortunately, it’s very touristy and most of the structure is not original at all. shame really. Still they had some original pieces inside.
So onwards towards Kristiansand, and what can I say, we drove in, looked around, and drove straight on! We had some burial mounds to find and after going through about 6 farms, up small side roads which looked suspiciously private and across a railway line, we ended up here.
Quite possibly our biggest waste of time yet on the trip, so we headed back to Sandefjord and stayed the night in the Clarion Collection hotel, which has a ‘local pub for local people’ just next door. Don’t go in! Still the city centre was rocking for a Sunday night.
Well at least the Sun had returned, lets hope it stays that way for the remainder of the trip.
Rain rain, tunnel tunnel, Snow!
We left Bergen behind, heading towards Kristiansand on the south coast. We knew we’d have to stop somewhere on the way just didn’t know where that might be yet!
The rain over the past days (and still raining!) meant that the streams and waterfalls were now ravaging white water and this made us come across some wonderful sights.
Every now and again the darkness would set in as the rain came down.
Rainbows were everywhere, just disappearing into a lake.
Of course, never too far from a tunnel or 3! We actually went up very high on this route, through the snow topped mountains.
Our little 1.2L polo still riding high and not letting us down at any point. On we went and so started to descend from the snowy heights and ended up just as nightfall came in Bykle.
A small hotel simply called Bykle Hotell! Fantastic food, and compliments to the chef.
Tomorrow we’ll push on to Kristiansand.