Chucking in the Towel

The sauna, nearly complete, roared into Rally HQ in Sevenoaks at 9:30 on Saturday night. The word “roared” is not used metaphorically. The hole in the manifold is now so huge that it’s not unlike driving a large dragon.

The last 1200 miles took Sven just under 26 hours, including a quick kip in a delightful Danish petrol station and a refuel every six meters or so.

The windscreen wiper "issue" identified in Sweden manifested itself most dramatically on the German Autobahn, when - at considerable speed - the wipers packed up completely in a thunderstorm.

Like any seasoned traveller, Sven scoffed at the continental weather, donned a pair of ridiculous sunglasses and stuck his kopf out of the window to see more clearly - this proved momentarily effective but he found it surprisingly tricky to steer and lean at the same time.

Giving up, he ploughed through a line of stout Teutonic cones onto the hard shoulder and hotwired the wiper motor directly to the battery. This solved the first issue but the electric windows were now stuck down and he realised that the wet leg he'd been suffering from was due to the fact the winscreen was falling out. This news, he had to admit, came as a relief: like the proverbial pessimistic German vegetarian, he had feared the wurst.

With our charity challenge completed, HMS Stockholm will be auctioned along with her spare parts following some mechanical work to get her back into top shape. Over 4000 miles and through 12 countries, the old Volvo engine consumed not a drop of oil or water despite being driven for over 10 hours continuously at various points. Apart from our temporarily cooked brakes and various electrical glitches, the car ran without serious fault for the whole trip. We think that’s pretty impressive.

The Sevenoaks to Stockholm Sauna Rally has featured in newspapers across the world from the Prague daily to South Korean Gazette (I would give you its proper title but my Korean’s not that hot). Googling “Sharrad Wilkinson Sauna” now produces around nine pages of results.

So far, we have raised over £4500 for Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust. Our JustGiving site: www.justgiving.com/sevenoakstostockholm will remain open until Christmas, so if you haven’t donated it’s not too late.
Lars, recently purchased Swiss felt hat firmly on head, has gone back to his veg, safe in the knowledge that if he ever gets into a sauna again it’s unlikely to be a moving one.

Sven, sitting in a ten foot high pile of towels and pine off-cuts, wonders what to do with himself next. Perhaps something a little more low key is in order.

Thank you everyone.

Images of the trip will be uploaded to our website within the next few days.

With thanks to our sponsors: Dane Valley Volvo, The White Company, Hammamas, Percy Walker and Co., Harvey's Video Productions, Ground Handling International, Ditto, Liberty International Underwriters, Norpe Saunas, Absolute Graphix, Tonbridge Learning Zone, Hildenborough Volvo.

Stockholm - Damage Limitation

The Sauna has made it to Stockholm. She’s content, we can tell. Coming off the ferry earlier, there was a spring in the old girl’s step: back to her homeland after twenty years banishment to England as a mobile skip. Our bright Turkish towels (thank you Hammamas) TIGHTLY fastened around our waists (following a previous cock-up on the alps) we took the low road (the only road) to the city centre and proceeded to get lost in the unimaginable traffic.

Apparently, provincial Swedes call Stockholm the Ice Queen (we know this only from the guidebook), presumably from the frosty reception they get when arriving (terrible pun not from the guide book). We're staying in the Old Town or "Gamla Stan", an island in itself - Stockholm is made up of a staggering 24,000 islands (direct quote) - and we wandered out earlier in search of food and drink, like the good hunter-gatherers we are. Moose was on the menu, naughty, naughty moose - a delicious treat, if a little heavy. Killing one is an entirely different proposition and requires some thinking about.

Sven is seriously worried that his stomach may have shrunk due to lack of food (he's cut down to three large meals a day) but Lars assures him that having to stop eating after the fourth course is in fact perfectly normal. Stockholm at first glance seemed as icy as we'd been led to believe but like most places, it warmed after a good square meal and seems a wonderful place.

Sadly though we're not on holiday, something that has become quickly apparent during the last few days. From the beginning this has been a challenge, firstly to raise £5000 for a cause we both feel strongly about and secondly to drive a 20 year old pine-clad estate across Europe to Sweden. We've achieved the latter of these objectives and are only 500 quid or so short of the former. I think we can call that a success.

It's been a pretty taxing journey, mentally, physically and financially. The car has seen better days. Both the saunagoers are essentially broke. Lars, quite sensibly, is taking the next flight out of Stockholm tomorrow. He's flying SAS and thinks that this entitles him to a free green beret and a set of throwing knives at duty free.

And Sven...? Well a captain should never desert a sinking ship, and with a pile of clean towels and at least ten hours of Dylan on the i-pod... why not?



With thanks to: the sauna cladding team, our parents and hugely supportive families, Tory, Tom's generous neighbours ( I still have a kilo of Tate and Lyle for the way home), our PR man: Joe, his family and assorted publicity assistants, Mike King (have you got that Sicaflex off yet?), the "Turdo" support crew, the Beemer Boys and Golf Guys (for slowing down for us), the Citroen 1CV man for the delicious beer, our dutch friends in Prague, the enthused Austrian traffic jam victims, Anita and Anders (the only people in Poland to look twice at the car), Dane Valley Volvo, Broadstairs (for the armour piercing headlights), all our media friends and generous sponsors, Adam Oliver (what a long journey it would have been without a radio), Beatrice and Hagen for your offers of a place to stop, Jason for some cracking logos, the long-suffering Ditto (the best print shop in Sevenoaks), all at GHI for their support and enthusiasm, Paul Alexander (who's evidently in the wrong job), the staff at SDBTT who we look forward to meeting when we're both back, and finally anyone who has supported us financially or otherwise along the way.

HMS Stockholm Meets her Match

HMS Scandinavia, the ship which is, at present, taking us across the Baltic is both older (some 30 years) and heavier (heavy) than our own rusty hulk. Ferries seem to have a peculiar feel to them and this one is no exception. Where else would you see a large group of men downing pints at half eight in the morning watching endless episodes of what looks like a Czech version of countdown?
“Ah, tuc Carol, consonant please, and another, and another, and another... Ok yes, I have a 15, zlelstwitetznictzly, how’s that?”

We’re on our third cabin now after various bits have fallen off the wall in the other two – most notably perhaps the tap, and the thermostat – no great loss as it didn’t work anyway. Lars is overjoyed at the prospect of having two spare bunks and has nabbed the extra pillows and now relines reading his book in a sort of “princess and the pea” arrangement. I shan’t have to shave for a week, having used some of the ship’s own-brand shower gel, which seems to possess all the important properties of Agent Orange.

Thank you Callum for the Custard Creams, I know you didn’t want to let them go.

The Long Road to Gdansk and the Morning Post.

Ever found yourself considering a driving holiday to Northern Poland? Stop, think carefully and book yourself on the next flight to Torremolinos. It’ll be awful, yes, but nothing, I repeat NOTHING in comparison to this. We drove the sauna through the night, being overtaken at various points on the cobbled tracks by a lorry full of jangling calor gas cylinders, a car towing a four metre trailer, 16 UPS trucks carrying the morning post and... wait for it... a house, on the back of a flatbed
truck.

You might think we were going slowly, but the sauna’s wooden needle barely dipped below sixty for the whole journey.

We’re now also in a position to confirm that the Daily Mail are wrong in their assertion that every Polish man under 40 is living illegally in a flat in East Anglia. They are in fact in Gdansk, thumbing their rosaries with one hand while the other hangs nonchalantly out the car window leaving the sturdy Polish thighs to do the bulk of the driving through the rush hour.

All this has rather taken it out of us. After a six hour non-stop drive from Berlin,
Sven and indeed the Sauna have developed chest infections – we’re wondering if the towels might be to blame – and Lars is now muttering incomprehensibly for much of the time. Our brief nap in the Polish woods did little to enhance our general wellbeing. We boarded the ferry to Stockholm (at ridiculous and unexpected expense) and hope to make the Swedish capital by afternoon on Thursday.

The sauna, having sounded “agricultural” for much of the journey – a Czech man made a point of stopping to point at it: “Traktor, tuc?!” – is now verging on the asthmatic and the electrics seem to be suffering from the damp weather. After five days of glorious sunshine, Gdansk gloom instantly put pay to our already ailing windscreen wipers – I can understand why Lech Walesa was so fed up.

North

Failing completely to appreciate the historical significance of the date, the Sauna left Prague and ploughed its way into Poland on Tuesday night following a brief stop in Dresden after bombing up the motorway from the south.

Dresden’s a remarkable place: wide airy tree-lined avenues and riverbanks dotted with picnicking students (who occasionally stand to throw a frisbee or kick a ball), weaving cyclists and joggers and groups strolling between cafes. All of this serves to give it a real university feel, enhanced by eye-popping architecture at every intersection – a considerable amount of which has been painfully reconstructed after we did a fairly thorough job of flattening it in 1945.

The Polish border brought a few surprises for Sven and Lars.
All though all roads may well lead to Rome, a great number of decent roads seem to lead to the Polish border, where they stop, abruptly. Lars left the wheel around midnight at a petrol station outside Berlin for Sven to drive the remaining miles into Poland, which he anticipated would be straightforward if not particularly relaxing.

Not the case.

Czech out the Sauna - Prahahaha

In the Czech news today:

A pine clad Volvo held up traffic in central Prague yesterday after some furious lane twitching in the Czech capital. Expressions ranged from bemused to outraged as the sauna swerved across four lanes of traffic in an attempt to reach a free parking space in the middle of the old town - something that quite simply does not exist.

Spare parts used so far: one headlight bulb

Other consumables used: one can of injector cleaner (delicious with salad).

Lars and Sven now plan to drive overnight to northern Poland where they'll find somewhere to kip until the ferry arrives.

Sven then expects to spend the next eighteen hours being sick.

Apologies for the brief message - a larger, image laden blog when we get to Stockholm!

Tally ho.

T&C

Go On Then, A Couple More

A Sample of Pictures So Far

Sauna Smolders Over Stelvio

Brace yourself sauna lovers, this is going to be an epic one.

As we couldn’t find the internet in Bormio (he says, as if it’s like looking for a large plastic box with lots of lights) we’ll have to update you on two days worth of epic European towel-clad adventuring in just the one post.

So, where did we leave you? Interlaken rings a bell, yes, Interlaken. Well, we left said city (I can hardly use its name three times in a paragraph) and first mate Lars Larson took the wheel and ran away with it. No, not true. Enough of this silliness. Lars Larson took the wheel and steered the good vessel HMS Stockholm up a mountain pass and into some fog. Not fog like you get in Surrey on an October morning but a proper peasouper, couldn’t see a blasted thing for miles and for a while both of us suspected that the sauna had taken on a life of its own and was pumping steam into the cabin. Anyway, we pressed on regardless, carved a path through the retched stuff and popped out to take some photos at the top in our towels, which was nippy, in the very literal sense of the word.

Let us pause for:

Sven Svenson’s report on the condition of the sauna:

When you’re asked a question on a regular basis, you tend to formulate a standard reply which you reel off without really thinking about it. Take the following as an example:

Question: “Does the wood add much weight to the car?”
Answer: “No, hardly anything, it really makes very little difference at all.”

This is a lie. An innocuous one, an accidental one (perhaps started by the captain and readily seconded by the First Mate) but still a lie. The wood, in conjunction with the whole second Volvo we’ve brought as spares, provisions enough to see us through until 2042 and assorted junk thrown in at the last moment has added a tremendous amount of weight to a vehicle that already came in at 2000 kg’s. Most noticeably this has affected our ability to stop (our ability to start and move forward has always been pretty shocking anyway).

We first noticed something was awry when a faint whiff was detected in the cabin. A whiff in the cabin is not in itself unusual - undesirable yes, but not unusual. The whiff however was quickly identified as burning friction material on the brakes. We stopped (after a fashion and more by luck than judgement) and allowed the old girl to cool before ploddering hesitantly on towards Bormio in Northern Italy through a serious of treacherous Alpine passes, taken slightly steadier than the first one.

In Bormio, after finding lodgings at the appropriately named Hotel Guffo we met up with fellow banger-ralliers and set off the next morning in convoy up the Stelvio Pass. This is worth a google, preferably a youtube.
We made it to the top, easy peasy. After a moment or two napping on the top of HMS Stockholm we offered support to our “support vehicle” the “Turdo” who had suffered a blown gasket on the top of their engine but was in otherwise good nick and a Golf Gti which was pouring coolant all over the show.

We then sauntered off down the pass after a meal, admiring the truly stunning alpine scenery, scraping motorcyclists off the woodwork and listening to Jimi Hendrix at full volume... feeling, all in all, very smug.

That was when the brakes caught fire, suddenly, dramatically.

Using the handbrake to take pressure off the main brakes is only a good idea if you’re handbrake isn’t awful. Ours is.

So, we’re a fire extinguisher down, no sweat. We cooled off for half an hour, enough time for the whole population of Stelvio to mistake Chris for an Italian and then headed off on the rolling roads of Austria, past lakes, twee villages, and interested Austrians who huddled round the Sauna for a picture. Fantastisch.
We’re in Saltzburg now and can hear The Sound of Overpriced Tat, calling us into the centre.

See you all in Praha, where we’ll endeavour to provide a route so far in lieu of the “tracker” that never quite worked.
Tarra.

Erik Erikson’s nature diary:

Animals and birds encountered: a buzzard, a mountain goat (very Swiss), one horny cow, 50 or more unidentifiable but certainly rare, small birds and insects now lodged permanently into the front grille of the sauna.

Communications cockup results in navigator jettisoning fuel cap in attempt to lighten load

Fellow Sauna Enthusiasts.

The alps are pretty nippy in a towel.

After reaching Interlaken by the most roundabout route imaginable - some 700 miles from Calais - HMS Stockholm rolled into Centre Ville with burning brakes a clonking clutch and a dying diff following her arduous alpine ascension (Interlaken is on the wrong side of the alps).

Sven Svenson`s report on the condition of the car:

Engine sound: genuinely terrible; not unlike a fifty year old tug boat.

Appearance: quite excellent. The general procedure for pedestrians and drivers alike seems to be to stop, gawp, laugh and leave. Overtakers commonly swerve manically towards us, thus allowing their snotty ten year olds to take pictures of the "wooden car". Which is actually a Sauna in case we`ve failed to mention this.

Spare parts used: one fuel cap, left on the roof after our umpteenth refuel of the day; we`re doing about ten to the gallon with a tail wind and are thinking of things to jettison. At the moment, 600 tins of baked beans seem like the most likely candidate.

Lars Larson`s report on the level of supplies: enough to sustain the saunagoers through a decade or two of nuclear winter.

The plans for today: We leave for Bormio in Italy via an alpline pass (we`re hoping it`s not the same one we entered interlaken by last night as it would amuse the occupants of our sister ship "The Turdo" no end - they took the motorway into town like most other sensible folk.

The most valuable item we^ve packed so far are the off road use only headlamps (supplied by our kind sponsor at Dane Valley) which enabled us to steer the good ship through small Swiss towns illuminating every front room and etching "Volvo" backwards onto the foreheads of passers by.

The spare fuel cap was also pretty useful.

Until tomorrow friends.

T&C

p.s. the online tracking, Im sad to report, doesn`t work - you`ll have to do it yourself. Which is more fun anyway. Go to google maps and type INTERLAKEN, SWITZERLAND. To see the whole route so far, or at least a vauge approximation of it, do a google route plan between Sevenoaks and Interlanken, Switzerland via Luzern, (also in this land of chocolate bank accounts.)

Media Appearances.

A quick update on our notable media appearances. I particularly enjoyed the one in Serbo-Croat and of course the one in the Daily Mirror with all the made up quotations. Brilliant. Tom


UK

BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/content/articles/2009/08/14/sauna_car_rally_feature.shtml

Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6078426/Pair-to-drive-4000-miles-in-sauna-on-wheels.html

Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208465/No-sweat-Friends-prepare-sauna-wheels-Europe-charity.html

Sevenoaks Chronicle

http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/news/Sweden-Saunamobile/article-1251769-detail/article.html

ING Direct

http://www.savingfeelsgood.co.uk/news/article/item_100411.htm

Daily Mirror

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/08/15/my-volvo-is-overheating-115875-21598149/

Wales Online

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/footballnation/boot-room-banter/banter/2009/08/24/pair-plan-to-drive-to-sweden-in-a-sauna-91466-24519227/

Finnish

http://www.ksml.fi/teemat/autot/autotalli/britit-ruotsi-on-saunan-ja-volvon-kotimaa/476863

Congoo

http://www.congoo.com/news/2009August23/sweat-Friends-prepare-auna-wheels

News Tin

http://www.newstin.co.uk/rel/uk/en-010-017563855

Romanian

http://www.ziua.net/news.php?data=2009-08-24&id=36841

Croatian
http://www.tportal.hr/funbox/funtime/33007/Od-Volva-napravili-saunu-i-u-rucnicima-krecu-na-put.html

USA
http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Places,+Geography/Towns,+Cities,+Counties/Prague/0dfR0oH7LxbL7/2

Motoring
http://blog.auto-europe.co.uk/

 

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