Miles on trip: 16103 miles
Countries: 27 (no more new countries)
Days on trip: 179
On Monday 5th December, we left Dresden with plenty of time to catch our ferry from Calais (4 days away) and had planned for a stop in Wolfsburg, where Andi’s mum works, and in Glandorf, to see Andi’s aunt. The day before we left, Martin did some Baloo checks and drove him around a bit to check everything was fine after the cold weather. So all was ready and good.
One hour into our drive to Wolfsburg, we felt a big bump accompanied with a loud noise. Did we just drive over something super bumpy or is something wrong? A few moments later, it happened again. This wasn’t good. We slowed down as much as we felt we could on the autobahn, and exited at the next stop. Fortunately it wasn’t far at all, but once we’d stopped and jumped out to take a look, we saw smoke coming from the rear diff and a pungent burning smell. Noooo. Looking up the nearest garage on google maps, we headed over to see what could be done. Unfortunately the first garage only dealt with BMWs, so couldn’t help us but they could give us the address of another nearby garage.
At the garage they immediately put Baloo up on a ramp, and noticing how much play there was in the rear diff, there was a sharp intake of breath and a shake of the head, and then they told us the bad news. We weren’t going to be able to make it to Calais. So close to home, yet so far away. We discussed options and in the end removed the rear drive shaft. It wouldn’t solve the problem but it would reduce the stress on the rear diff, and driving in front wheel drive only, we could hobble back to Dresden with our car. We also discussed removing the rear prop shafts to completely isolate the diff, hoping this would allow us to make it to Calais, but it was decided that this might be too much for the front diff and wasn’t worth the risk.. So this was all a bit of a disaster, but the good thing was that we were still very close to Andi’s parents house and Baloo could limp back there.
Arriving back in Dresden, we immediately started looking into options. Very kindly, Andi’s dad said it would be fine if we left the car there and sorted out shipping etc later, so we decided to first look into flights back to the UK so we could make our flight out to Singapore on time. Unfortunately, meeting Andi’s mum in Wolfsburg and Andi’s aunt in Glandorf wasn’t possible anymore, but fortunately we hadn’t planned to go to Australia with Baloo, otherwise this would have been even worse. So a couple of days later we flew from Berlin to Manchester. It was sad to leave Baloo behind, but we were backpackers now, and hopped on the plane for the next part of our adventure.
Back in the UK, and at approximately the same time as if we’d driven without incident, we put our plans into action. This meant that the first evening we made a beef roast, along with a yummy crunchy pie, and the second evening we went for a Chinese with Martin’s dad. Cravings sorted, it was time to check in on the turkeys. No milking on the farm for Andi this time round, but with it being close to Christmas, Andi was tempted to help Uncle Dave with the turkeys. She saw sense, and left it to them to get the turkeys ready. Poor turkeys.
After a brief catch up, we headed into Manchester with Martin’s mum to visit our 4th Christmas market of the season. We had a nice time wandering around Manchester, the stalls and the shops. We learnt about the famous (hmm) Manchester soap sponge, a sponge that is covered in soap – pretty cool actually. [Ed. Future Christmas present idea]
Now it was time for us to head back down to London so that we could catch up with friends and catch our flight to Singapore. Being back in London is always nice, especially when Martin’s brother put us up in his flat in Kennington. We spent a day back home in Brixton, visiting our old favourite sites, playing spot the difference, and visiting a couple of newly opened bars/restaurants. The next say we met up with Adam for lunch in Fitzrovia, and then we went to winter wonderland – our fifth and final Christmas market of the season. It’s been tradition for us to go there the day after Andi’s work’s Christmas party. Obviously there was no Christmas party this year but we went anyway, walked around the stalls and very importantly had our 3pm ice skating slot.
In the evening, our last in Europe for a while, we met up with a few friends for a cracking night in the Bavarian beer tent. It was great fun, and lovely to see Adrian, Becky, Stef, Emily, Filipa, Keo and Stephen. Thanks for coming. 🙂
Road Monkeys 