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  In everything we should expect good days and bad days, but it is nice if day one of a road trip goes well. Mine didn't! Two mishaps, one thrust upon me and the other strictly self inflicted. Firstly, I missed my Shuttle time and lost an hour out of the travel time. Someone managed to close the M23 which caused major disruption, not only on that motorway, but also threw the M25 into total chaos. It took us ninety minutes to travel through two junctions. That brought us to the second problem for which I must be strictly reprimanded having broken one of my own golden rules. That is to thoroughly check everything about the car before starting a trip. I did everything except checking the coolant level. Sure enough, getting tangled up in the traffic caused Bridget's temperature to rise, as well as mine. Once passed the hold-up we were able to maintain a reasonable speed to the Shuttle terminal and...

I've been travelling in my MG, Bridget the Midget, for nearly twenty years, through sixty-four different countries. Following some of the more difficult trips, the Abingdon to Cape Town trip for example, a certain amount of restoration work to Bridget was necessary. Unfortunately the same cannot be done for me, so I have come to the decision that I shall do one more long trip, health permitting, before folding up our maps. My plan is for a run of around 10,000 miles that will take us across Europe, through Turkey and up to my first destination, Georgia. I want to meet with another population that is prepared, at considerable risk, to reject the oppressive rule of the Putin regime. From Georgia we will drive around most of the Black Sea coast to re-visit Moldova and Ukraine. From Ukraine we will head north to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania including a visit to the Riga Motor Museum. I am expecting this trip to take...

I had enjoyed the ski resort of La Clusaz in my last post and having left there we headed north towards Luxembourg. At least that was the intention, which in my modern Jaguar F Type, should present no problem...... Having not used maps at all on this journey, instead relying on GPS, I tended not to scan the system's chosen route too carefully, or mentally store the landmarks that would guide me in the right direction, as I would with maps. The GPS system in the Jaguar is a dynamic system receiving traffic status updates from various road authorities in 'real-time' as we drive. It is programmed to flag-up traffic delays ahead and works out alternative routes avoiding the problems. Smart system, dumb driver! My preference when driving through unfamiliar areas is to observe the countryside as well as the road ahead, denying all other inputs to my brain (well that's my excuse). At some stage early on in this particular...

  A first: I am touring, not in Bridget, but in my Jag. Once I had decided to do another short road trip in Europe, I could not decide which car to take. Strictly speaking Bridget was in need of a service and Bertie, the 'B', is up for sale and therefore in display mode and not to be fouled with road dirt, etc. Then returning from some essential shopping, on a bright sunny day, of which we had had few, I just looked at the Jag with its' roof down and thought "She really is a beautiful motor" so that was the deadlock broken. I overlooked the down-side of not being able to enter low emission zones of which there are many across Europe and anyway the better fuel consumption and, as it turned out, and the air conditioning made up for the emissions. I can also confirm that the luggage space in the Jag is far less than either of...