Into Europe!

Having had a somewhat depressing day with the car and the weather yesterday today things turned around dramatically. Although not a competitive day today, transiting 340km from one side of Istanbul to the other, the car was humming along beautifully. There really is something very satisfying knowing that the work done yesterday afternoon made a difference. I haven't a clue which bit of the work done worked but something has clearly changed. We have power on the hills and smooth running at speed, none of which we had yesterday.

The Lagonda's in general have had a very tough rally. Ours seized on day 1, Chis Lunn's has been on a transporter for the last week but has returned to the rally today, Nigel Gambier's is on a truck to Istanbul having lost all it's oil pressure (I'm sure that they will get it fixed), the Dutch Lagonda has gone home, a Swiss Lagonda was on a truck in the Stan's but is back with us, leaving I believe only one Lagonda (an LG45) which hasn't been trucked yet!

We crossed over the Bosphorous moving from Asia into Europe, an incredibly satisfying moment.

On arrival at the Klasis Resort Hotel we managed to repair the sunroof, find a welder to repair the headlight bracket, organise an oil change and find some Radweld to repair the radiator, all on a Sunday. If the radiator fix doesn't work we have been told to throw in an egg white!

They said at the beginning that a small minority of teams soak up all the support resources and you really notice it upon arrival at hotel car parks. Some teams are totally self reliant whist others cannot put engine oil in for themselves! James and I have been pretty self reliant, asking advice but more often than not getting on and doing the repair ourselves. There are 200 odd, very strong willed
people here and we're not all going to get on all the time, particularly with different nationalities approaches to queuing!

James is now off to have his hair cut. I think that I will wait until Italy, the choice between and Italian or a Turkish barber is, I believe, a straightforward one.

Tonight out delightful Turkish hosts, the Turkish Motor Federation, is hosting a cocktail party by the pool so it off there for a couple of beverages.

Tomorrow we travel a couple of hundred km to the border with Greece and then we really are into Europe. It's a long day tomorrow in terms of mileage and time trials but thereafter the days seem to be reasonable. 2700km to go, keep everything crossed.

RHC

Sent from my iPhone