Thursday 15th October

We’ve spent the last couple of days enjoying the benefits of four walls, a non-flappable roof and heating now that autumn has arrived; it’s still blue skies and sunshine, but the temperature must have dropped 15o with frost in the mornings. We’re trying not to get too used to the wood burning stove in the gîte as there will be no such luxuries once back on the road (unless you are Andy and Jane).

The main aim of the time at Bob’s has been to sort out the back of the Land Rover, putting in place the various ideas that we’ve had over the last few weeks travelling. Our hard plastic Storm clothes cases (similar to Peli cases) have made way for North Face duffle bags, and we’ve managed to lose a couple of other cases to create more space, allowing easier access to things. Items have been rearranged or discarded as surplus to requirements, such as the scaffolding poles used as a rear awning as we’ve decided that we can make do with just the side awning, moving the stove if we need to cook in the rain. An AlpKit head torch has been modified to mount on the interior roll cage so that it can act as either a fridge light or map reading light, and we’ve fitted Osram Dot-it lights elsewhere to light up those hard to see places. Don’t worry, we’re keeping the giant Spork.

The other thing we have been doing is rethinking our route. It looks like we should be able to get our visa’s for Iran (which we’ll collect in Turkey all being well), but rather than carry on through Pakistan and India we’re going to look to return to Turkey and head down through Syria and Jordan. We’re waiting to hear back from the shipping agent in Jordan, but we now hope to ship N609 out of Aqaba to Australia. More phone calls to make tomorrow, but that’s the current plan. We’re sorry to miss out on India and Pakistan, but Syria and Jordan are excellent alternatives. Pakistan was our main worry, there’s just too much nonsense going on there right now (and we wouldn’t want anything to happen to the Land Rover).

I’m sure everyone will be pleased to hear the windscreen washer is now squirting again; it didn’t take much fixing as the wipers didn’t work either so it was just a blown fuse. Thanks to Kate, Sam and Philip for our going away present of a box of fuses, very handy!