The departing group of Bob, Andy, Julie, Peta & myself left Earls Court on the Sunday morning at 9am for the start of our big European Kombi trip in very overcast weather. We made it down to the Hastings by 11.30am, where two of the guys from the Sundowner’s trip showed us around their town (famous for the 1066 battle) with its narrow streets, fort on the hill, shingly beach, and entertainment areas on the beachfront. We took in a few ales at a delightful little pub close to the water’s edge and had an entre of cockles and mussels before returning to their place for a late lunch – a magnificent meal of roast pork and veges, followed by rhubarb, before we took our leave around 3pm. We reached Ramsgate around 5pm and grabbed two ... read more

We were away from the campsite at Warsaw by 7am and reached the German border (500km) some 9 hours later after a short lunch stop. The countryside was still devoted to farming, but much less intensive than in Russia with greater variety and a nice contrast of greens. Most of the farmhouses were two-storeyed stone houses, with characters all of their own. The joint border took less than 2 hours, and fortunately there were no hassles on the Polish side with our money declarations or our purchases. The final leg into West Berlin was along the E8 autobahn, travelling 100kph the whole way, and with no time change we reached camp by 7.30pm. There was not a lot to see off the road, with trees sheltering fields most of the way, but notable were the sudden ... read more

We were up early for what was for me to be hopefully the highlight of the trip, our visit to the USSR, as the main reason I chose this particular Sundowner’s itinerary was because most of them bypassed the communist countries and made it straight from Athens to London. We made it the 30kms to the Romania-USSR border by around 8am. Discharge from Romania took around 30 minutes and was no hassle. However, we weren’t so lucky on the Russian Immigration side, although that was not unexpected. Each person was individually searched, with the two main items of interest of Customs being a check of money and searching for subversive literature. I could have given them some grief on both counts, what with my substantial collection of Asian banknotes and about 8 Newsweeks that had been ... read more

We made an early start from Istanbul in pouring rain, and it took around 4 hours to the Turkey-Greece border travelling through fairly modern villages and lush farming country, although this was not easy to view with the windows all fogged up. We had a pretty easy run at both borders, with the dual formalities taking less than an hour, which we gained by turning our clocks back an hour anyway. Most of the time was spent cashing money for the upcoming weekend and buying duty free booze – I invested USD4 in a bottle of Bacardi. As if rehearsed, the rain disappeared and the sun came out as soon as we crossed over into Greece. About another 4-hour drive took us down to the fishing village of Kavalla. The countryside is very lush and used ... read more

It took around 90 minutes to make it through to the Afghan-Iranian border, to get the most thorough examination we have seen yet. They took two hours to search everything, including sleeping bags, and panels of the bus – and this was only the disembarkation from Afghanistan! The Iran authorities were not so tough, but the whole deal took some 5 hours to complete, including lunchtime. The clocks going back an hour gave us a bit of extra time. The road into Iran was slightly greener, but still of little interest. Many of the signs being only in Arabic made navigation more difficult. We encountered frequent dust-storms, occasional willy-willies and some light rain, our first rain of the trip. We finally reached Mashhad around 5pm and booked into the Darbandi Hotel, which was really expensive, but ... read more