Driving around the Nurburgring was a
day and an experience I will never forget. But now it's Wednesday
April 3rd and we're on our way to Brenshiem, Suzuki
European Headquarters. We'll receive a cheque on behalf of Save the
Children, from the European Marketing Manager. We'll also do our bit
for their P.R team to take some pictures. The guys at Suzuki really
made us welcome. Formalities completed and lunch at the company
restaurant, we were on the road again at about 3.00pm, we had a 770
mile drive to Gdansk.
I had arranged to meet the retired President
of Poland, Lech Walesa, on the 5th at 11am at his office
in the centre of the city. The journey to Gdansk seemed to go on for
ever, we were short on time so had to drive long hours to get there
on time. We arrived at Leipzigat around 9.00pm for our overnight stop
and were ready for food and sleep. The following morning, Thursday
4th, we were up and on the road at 7.30am and expected to
reach Gdansk by 8pm. Everything was going fine, cars were running
nicely, Roland and Keith were driving LC03 and I was driving LC02
with Tom in the left hand seat.
Being together in the car for long
periods of time, I tried to get into discussion with Tom and talk
about various topics but found it difficult to get a sensible
conversation going, resulting in long periods of silence. I would
look across at him from time to time, he had a sort of blank look as
though he was away with the fairies!
During the course of the
morning, travelling along a new four lane motorway, suddenly we came
to a maze of a road junction, roads going in all directions. I saw
Roland and Keith drive off on a road to my right, but I was committed
to the road I was taking. Both roads went to Gdansk, but it turned
out that Roland and Keith ended up on the new road and I was on the
old road. We spoke over the radio and decided to continue and would
meet at the Hotel later. Being split up is not an ideal situation
from a safety point of view but we decided to go with it. We had
TomTom G.P.S in both cars but to be on the safe side, I had asked Tom
the cameraman to help me when he was not filming, by reading the map
to make sure that we kept on the right road, this arrangement didn’t
work out too well as it turns out he wasn’t any good at map
reading!
The old road turned out to be mainly a
wide single lane in each direction for 450 miles. That day we
experienced freezing rain, ice, snow, and fog. There were holes and
cracks everywhere. The standard of driving from the other road users
was atrocious. To get ahead, drivers would overtake a line of bumper
to bumper moving traffic going in the same direction, when vehicles
came from the other direction they would just turn into the cars
being overtaken to create a space, who in turn would be pushed on to
the hard shoulder. This sort of driving made the traffic slow and our
eventual late arrival at Gdansk. That day went down in my diary as
one of the worst driving experiences of the journey. I had driven 12
hours that day, and towards the end of the journey struggling to keep
my eyes open, the man next to me was snoring his head off. It didn’t
help me when I was fighting to keep my eyes open. After what seemed
like an eternity, we finally arrived at Gdansk.
The next day, Friday 5th
March day 6, was an important day for me. For the past year I had
been trying to make contact with the offices of Mikhail Gorbachev of
Russia and Lech Walesa of Poland, so that I could arrange to meet
them as we travelled. I can hear you saying, you told us about this
in an earlier article, and that would be right, but please bear with
me, I won’t dwell on it too long. I kept beavering away with emails
trying to find out where these people were located, so I could
correspond, very difficult when you never get any response. Many
times I felt like giving up, but I’m pleased I persevered, because
the reward was fantastic, and proved the people who said I would
never do it, wrong. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I
was so determined to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, I talked Vi in to having
a long weekend in Moscow to meet up with a Russian interpreter who I
was trying to talk into joining us when we drive through Russia,
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. I also thought I would have an
opportunity to have a look around while there, and if I got lucky and
found Gorbachev’s house I would knock on the door and see what
happens.
As it happened I found out where the man
lived but the security wouldn’t allow me anywhere near the place,
so that was that. It turned out that he was in Berlin at the time
anyway, perhaps that’s where we should have gone.
I never did get anywhere with meeting
Mikhail Gorbachev, but we had more luck with retired Polish President
Lech Walesa’s office. They agreed to a meeting 10.30am 5th
April, and here we were standing outside the building that housed his
top floor office, I just had to stand there for a while to take it
all in, and compose myself ready for the meeting. At this point I had
a discussion with Tom the cameraman to explain how important it is to
get best from the filming, and in particular I need a still picture
of Roland , Keith and myself shaking hands with Lech Walesa. When
the time came to take the picture, and in the confusion, I didn’t
notice that Tom had passed my camera to someone else to take it, so
he could be in the picture. The only picture we have for the book of
Roland Keith and myself with Lech Walesa has our cameraman in it. We
can probably put it right with some picture wizardry, but I was then
thinking that from now on I will have to keep a serious eye on the
cameraman and the filming......... to be continued
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