Day Six Thursday Backwards and Forwards, the 20 Feet Incident and not forgetting the Borders

A very early start this morning as the local police say that are vehicles must be moved from where they are parked by 07:00 prompt or we will get a hefty fine. They tend to be very prompt with their timekeeping when it means that they get some money. So it’s up at 05:30 for Breakfast at 06:00 and into our wagons, ready for the off at 07:00. The local police are milling about at about 06:45 ready to fine us but it’s no money for their Christmas party as convoy moves off just before seven.

We get to the Romanian border in good time and have to have our vehicles weighed, paperwork checked and stamped. This is quite difficult for Sean as he didn’t understand the rolling axle weighbridge that you just need to drive over slowly for it to register your weight. He kept trying to stop his rear wheels on the weighbridge, this was the case even though the Romanian official, and a group of convoy drivers kept telling him to keep rolling until he was completely over the weighbridge. It eventually took him four attempts and a great deal of shouting by the officials and fellow convoy drivers before he eventually got it right (not helped by Anthony (Flintstones) who as Sean’s rear wheels came onto the weighbridge kept shouting stop and Sean did) this earned Sean another medal he is now serious competition for me and is within a couple of medals of catching me up in the league table.

Well we thought that we had got through the Romanian border without any problems until we came across two cabins spaced about 20 feet apart. We had to present all or documentation at the first cabin only to be told that we would need copies for the second cabin as the first cabin would need to keep one set of our documentation (complicated stuff to follow I know but that’s borders). Peter promptly set of for a garage half a mile up the road that conveniently had a photocopy machine that we could use (for a small charge of course). Paperwork in hand and passports verified that their faces matched Monster Socks drove their vehicle the 20 feet to the next cabin to present the same paperwork again. Unfortunately this is where I then earned another medal, I just happened to walk across the 20 feet to Monster Socks vehicle to ask them a question when shouts of no and lots of arm waving by one of the customs officials telling me that I had to come back to the first cabin and could not proceed across the 20 feet or so. This earned me a stern telling off from the customs official and all the rest of the convoy drivers were sent back to their vehicles to ensure that any further infringements would not happen (that’s borders for you).

Anyway we finally all got through the Romanian border without any further rule breaking and travelled down the road which was more potholes than road. We all had to snake our way through this dangerous territory which looked like something resembling a battlefield, we all managed to do so but there was lots of rocking and rolling along the way.

We have now been met by our helpers in country whose task is to try and ease the border crossing, this crossing could take some time all we can do is wait. A couple of hours later and boredom has set in myself (Boppers) and Steve (Monster Sock) decide that we would write some graffiti on the back of my vehicle in the dirt, we come up with “Yeti onboard 90 years of age”. This was so much fun that we decided that we would do an apt slogan for every van. Please see below for a selection of some of them.

Four hours in and the boredom has really set in, our helpers are working really hard and they have a team of people trying to speed up and smooth our border crossing. The boredom though has led to a positive, convoy leaders (monster Socks) have been reading the manual for the new radios and found out that some of the radios have a slightly different setting on them (there is a more technical aspect to this, it’s complicated and very boring) this has led to the issue that some people up and down the convoy have been getting some static on the radios. All the radios have now been changed so that they have the same settings, so the radios should work even better than they did before.

We are through the border at last, the time to get through both sets of borders we think was around 11 hours and we have been informed that it should have taken 18 hours. Our thanks go out to the hard work of the people who are working on our behalf in Moldova. While we have been sat around getting bored and passing the hours they have been hard at work for the past 11 hours getting paperwork translated, customs clearance, making phone calls and generally getting the job of getting our aid and drivers across the border. Once again or thanks go to the many individuals who give up their time to help the charity both at home and abroad.

So we hit the road and it’s a proper convoy now, a police convoy, we have a police escort with his blue lights flashing and as we hit Chisnau he puts his siren on and blocks the traffic at all the red lights so that we can drive straight on through. All the locals are standing and staring, we must have made quite a sight, 10 vehicles hazards on flying through the city.

And finally we had a lovely moment as we came over the border and whilst we were refuelling. A Moldovan family pulled up in a battered van and started staring at all our teddies in the front of the vehicles. One was offered to the young child in the vehicle, a great beaming smile promptly followed from the youngster and the lucky teddy got a great big hug and a stroke.

First of many smiles delivered

That’s all folks see ya later

Paul (one half of the big boppers)