I should by now be crossing northern Greece heading home, instead I am already there having cut short my trip.
My apologies to all who had hoped for a vicarious trip to Georgia and Armenia, but it isn’t happening this year. We only made it as far as Salzburg when I made the decision to abort the trip and return home. Although the decision was made for a combination of reasons, the responsibility for the situation lays squarely with me.
The over-riding cause of this was breaking my own golden rule that the car must be fully prepared before starting a road trip. The only mitigation I have is ‘old age’. This trip was to have been embarked upon in June of this year, but due to an erroneous health scare, was put off to September. This meant I had only a short period in which to prepare and I quite wrongly focused on aesthetics, ignoring basic mechanical checks. The error was made evident on the first day, when having been seriously delayed in traffic the engine seriously overheated. It wasn’t until the following day I realised that the coolant hadn’t been checked and the radiator had run dry. Kicking myself I had difficulty locating a universal coolant that could be mixed with the one previously used. Most manufacturers recommend that you should not mix different brands of coolant. However, that was satisfactorily resolved and no apparent long term damage appears to have been suffered.
On day three something started binding one of the rear wheels. It was not visible, but the rear brakes were causing problems when pulling away from a stationary position and increasing the fuel consumption noticeably. The rear wheels were also getting very hot. However, I had no spares in the boot for the brake system and little confidence that it wouldn’t get worse. Again, should have been checked before leaving.
On top of this I can’t say I was enjoying the driving, which is one of the main joys of a road trip. It was raining for between 50% and 75% of the time every day, causing all my focus to be on the act of driving rather than the areas I was driving through. The final nail in the coffin, was that the costs of fuel, hotels and food across Europe have increased dramatically over the past five years, to a point where road trips have become expensive.
So again, my apologies for any disappointment. Given my age, I have to seriously consider whether my memory is still up to the task of covering all the essential details of embarking on such trips again. Short trips, just around Europe are fine, but anything more might be pushing my luck.
PS – Returning home rather than trying to resolve the rear wheel problem has proven the right thing to do. I have discovered that the whole run back from Salzburg to the UK was done with just the front brakes. Unfortunately the wheel hubs had cut through the top return springs on both rear brakes. the hubs had also cut half-way through the brake levers and a shoe on the passenger side had become dislodged from its bracket and was binding the wheel. Every brake component on both sides have had to be replaced and I have re-fitted old style hubs that will not repeat the problem.