Our visas were only valid for one day...

Well, once again most people are back in blighty, nursing week long hangovers and having the Dumball blues at work.

As far as I know, no one is driving back this year (good luck getting through Russia without Rob! Although they'd probably get a ferry straight from Helsinki to Rostock or something if they were), and everyone I spoke to would have left as off about half an hour ago. If anyone is still out there keeping the dream alive do leave a comment!

So congrats to everyone that made it, congrats to Rick and Nick for pulling a tour de force and the incredible feat of getting all safely into and out of Russia, and congrats to those who truly made the Dumball their own, and took everyone along with them for the ride.


These are the winners of the Dumball Awards 2009.

Some people got Spot Prizes - these were awards invented along the way, for those who surprised us, they got t-shirts and medals. The real awards and trophies are highly sought after and contested accolades - stuff of legend amongst Dumball folk.

Spot prize: The Challenge Masters (for taking the most ridiculous photo):


The Festering Welshmen - for filling their tank with nothing but their crackers on.

Spot prize: The On Tour Charity Collectors (for collecting money whilst on the Dumball):

Daisy Does Dumball - they collected £500!

Spot prize - The World's Most Horrible Team (for relentless twatitude and idiocy):

Frank and Harry from the Rogue Traders

Spot Prize - The Alain Prost Award (for stunt-driving):


The Driver Alan Frost from the Happy Hour Hotrods.

The Grand Master Cash Award (for fundraising):

Large Hardon Collider - they raised £4,500!

The Shitty Shitty Bang Bang Shield (for the first team to lose a car):

The Dukes - they didn't even make it to Colchester!

The Dame Edna Award (for fancy dress):

Blackbeard's Delight - they never took it off! (even while sleeping in their car)

The Blind Bat Trophy for (talentless map reading):

Francis Gregory Smalley - current holder of the trophy, he was happy to get it again, but at least this time he really did deserve it!

The Tim Westwood Baseball Cap (for blingin' you car):

The Putt Pirates - you really could play golf on it!


The Ben Crean Prize for Peace (and International Relations):

Rob Hewitt - we couldn't have got into Russia without him. Literally.

Ben's dad flew out to give the award and to remind us all of the great man that was Ben Crean. Very moving - RIP Ben.


Here's a video of Ben which we wanted to play at the awards ceremony but couldn't due to technical difficulties... http://youtube.com/watch?v=TA8_yfP8Uzc It features him undertaking one of the challenges on the '07 Rally.

The Adam Horn Bling Bling Trophy (for simply being cool):

Jake Manning of the Strangelets! For rousing motivational speeches and an astounding ability to chill out (man).


The Adam Horn award was presented by our very own Daddy of the Dumball - someone who really gets it, does a lot of great work for charity (but does like to talk about it) and makes the Dumball a special place to be: Adam's dad, Mr. Colin Horn himself:


Here's a video of Adam's thoughts about the Dumball which we wanted to play at the awards...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vo9BmIiBeGw

And last but in absolutely no way least, the coveted
Spirit of The Dumball Monkey:


This is the highest honour you can receive. It is given to group or individual who shows the most passion, courage, and madness along the way. This year it went to Rob Hewitt for his epic border crossing skills, mean he is the first Dumballer in history to do the Ben Crean/Monkey double. Well done Rob.

If anyone has any video footage of The Monkey's incredible entrance please comment here or let me know!

---

So there you have it. An epic Dumball. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, everyone who came, everyone who donated. Thanks to the Russian border guards who eventually let us into their country - at 5am! Let's do it all again next year - following the footsteps of our founding fathers...?


Sudders

The Dumball 2009 comedown

Shamelessly stolen from last year, but here are a few things to get used to again:

* Wearing socks. And pants. Cleans ones at that.
* Eating.
* Driving with the windows up.
* Not having to herd at least 30 cats before every decision.
* Rain.
* Not having €70 fill ups twice a day.
* Not having your squadron at the end of a walkie ready to solve (or at least throw money at) any problem.
* Not having any money left.
* Not being pink on one side depending on which side of the car you've been sat on.
* Not being able to raise an instant smile and a wave from anyone by driving a strangely decorated car through the centre of the busiest town you can find.
* Sleep. Lots of it.
* Being in the same bed (not to mention country) for two nights in a row.
* Not talking filth and bollocks constantly.
* Not having the power of 100 amazing comrades on tap at all times.
* It being about being there, not getting there.
* Not talking in cliquey in-jokes the whole time.
* Talking about getting into Russia... (or not...)
* Not having a partially naked, drunk man wearing a pink bra to 'help' with any occasion.
* Tipping waiters
* Not having to drink your way through a hangover
* Having people pronounce your surname correctly.

As a finale to the week, I'd like to thank Rick and Nick for inviting me along on their annual holiday again. Much fun was had, many friends reacquainted, and many more friends made. Next year, I promise to be slightly more prepared.

Love you guys!

B.

Helsinki... and its over!

102 Dumballers started, 36 cars headed towards Colchester, 101 Dumballers finally made it to Helsinki (Tom sadly found his inability to keep water or food down too much and took a sensible early flight home to get some treatment.. (hes doing ok) so here we are before the procession to the awards night

The awards ceremony!

The awards ceremony was last night, and it was absolutely awesome.

Rick and Nick seriously raised the bar on the venue - it was an old almost castle in the middle of Helsinki. We had booked one of the main conference rooms there which was exclusively ours until 10pm. After then, the whole place turned into an enormous nightclub.

The ceremony went really well. I'll leave a full rundown of the awards to Sudders, but suffice to say there were plenty of winners all around (and all of them well deserved)

Once the nightclub opened properly, there was a substantial invasion by absolutely stunning Finnish women. Much mingling later, and it seems that several of the cars were given away, and everyone was having a bloody amazing time. I could even be found 'throwing some shapes' on the dance floor throughout the evening :)

We're now in Helsinki airport, waiting for our flight. Free wi-fi really is awesome :)

Once again I'd like to personally thank Rick and Nick for all the organisation that they have done for this, and previous years Dumballs. I'm already looking forward to next year :)

B.

A few photos!

So, here we are.

The Finsish border was a doddle, every single one of us (bar Tom Horn
who has been flown home with man flu [only joking, it looks like he may
have picked up a dodgy infection in Thailand]) made it here eventually.
A few people didn't get into Russia and had to get a ferry from Tallinn
to Helsinki - I'm sure Zubel has blogged about that.

We did over stay our visas by about a hour, but they really weren't
bothered. Anyway, we've got things to do so I let a few pictures do thhe
talking... these are a bit random and rubbish but plenty of fun! We've
got the award ceremony tonight and then most people are off tomorrow
morning so it's all downhill from here.

Dumball 1, signing off for now.

The 'Finnish' Line!

Hotel lobby of the Radisson SAS 'Seaside' hotel.

It appears that everyone is now here. I'm not expecting some of our teams to surface for a good few hours as they didn't get into the hotel until 5am-ish.

Spirits at breakfast are high. At some point we're supposed to hand in our voting forms for the various awards. However, it seems that whilst I was in charge of handing them out and gettnig them put into each of the room welcome packs, I omitted to get one myself. Ah well, I doubt my vote will count much ;)

We decided last night that one of the best candidates for the Practical Joker award is the Estonian government - primarily for building the least interesting car park in all of history. However, there may be other contenders so the awards ceremony tonight will be interesting.

Our plan for today is to clear the car out, and perhaps get in contact with the recycling centre to see what time we can bring it in tomorrow. Our flight is apparently at 2pm, so we should be in Blighty later tomorrow afternoon. From there, we need to figure out how we're getting back from Gatwick :)

B.

3 hours until our visas run out...

Wow. Well, we're back on the road again, after spending less than 12 hours in St. Petersburg.

We eventually arrived at the hotel at 8am, having spent 20 hours on the road. The advance parties had secured us a 2pm check out and were all waiting for us, so we had a quick celebratory beer with breakfast and hit the hay for a few hours zs.

It would obviously be stupid to leave without having a little look around russia, so the departure was pushed back to an unpresidented 6pm. All we have left to do now is get the hell off russian roads and collapse into the welcoming arms of the EU.

So we spent the afternoon experiencing many weird and wonderful forms of transport, namely walking and the metro.

St P is a beautiful city, but the pictures on my phone don't do it justice. And I expect like many in Russia, it is a mental place and a 'fine' place - a number of the group got done for taking photos in the underground.

We had a lovely meal and classic dishes- borsht: sour and lamby (prefer mine) and beef stroganof (i know i can't spel): creamy and rich (spectacular).

We've just heard the may still be a massive wait at the border, but that doesn't bother up as (perhaps stupidly...) we are assuming that we won't actually have any admin problems this time, and Helsinki isn't going anywhere. More to the point, neither are we once we get there...

Some things that happen on the Estonian/Russian border

I'm sat outside the hotel back in Tallinn, after our aborted Russian border crossing attempt. After 10 hours of waiting around it seems that the Estonians weren't happy with our V5 'New Keepers Supplement' and wouldn't let us attempt the Russian border at all. So, we were turned away and had to head the 200 kilometres back to Tallinn.

We hooked up with Raging Horn, The Large Hardon Colliders and the Strangelets to make the journey back to the same hotel that we had left that morning. We finally got back here at 4am and just collapsed onto our beds.

However, we're very philosophical about it. In some ways it's been a fun part of the adventure. We always knew it would be a risk to try to get over the border with limited documentation and in this instance the gamble didn't pay off. However, we did see true Dumball fashion in the holding area with everyone inventing games to keep their spirits high. We also learned a limited amount of Estonian! Apparently 'wah wah wah' means that 5-6 cars can move off, and 'wah wah wah, wah wah wah' means that 6 lorries can move off. I'm almost feeling multilingual!

Our plan for today is to find the ferry port (which shouldn't be a problem because I think it's about 500 metres down the road), and get ourselves onto a ferry to Helsinki. I reckon we'll be arriving there far before the Dumball do - apparently they didn't hit St Petersburg until around 5-6am local time, so just enough time to check into the hotel to have breakfast, then check out!

I'll leave you with a link to some of the frivolity that was occurring in the holding area. We decided that it would be an interesting 'scientific experiment' to try to determing exactly how many people we could fit inside the Manshaft car. Here are the results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UbRsImWhRM
(it may take a few minutes for Google to finish processing it. be patient if it's unavailable :))

The answer: 24, it seems.

Love to all reading. We'll update later.

B.

To wait or not to wait...

There is no question.

So it appears it works like this: you arrive at Narva, estonian border at about 2pm. Despite knowing we won't get through, we head straight for the border just to have a look. Not much to look at, and not many friendly looks.

"Back."

So back we go, as we knew we would have to. We didn't realise quite how long it would take to get on any further...

Next, you have to find at scrap yard. Well it looks like a scrap yard.

You have to queue to get into the scrap yard, even if you arrive in a 72 wheeled convoy, and stopping to get into the scrap yard means you bring a major highway to a halt. On entry to the scrap yard you have to produce any and all documents you have (one of which has to be your V5) and eventually you get a small metal token.

The small metal token allows you to enter the scrap yard, free up the motorway, and join the REAL queue.

Of course this isn't obvious at first. There's a lot of headless chickening and running around trying to find our two russian speaking comrades and/or english speaking locals. It eventually transpires that the scrap yard is some sort of holding tank because there's not much room at the border itself. Estimated waiting time? 2 to 8 hours. We've been here 10 so far.

So the usual high jinks kicked off- we had a game of 'smallinator' (Frank Smalley asks a series of series questions about ITV1, sweets, Freddy Mercury etc, while we use gummi bears as playing pieces), space hopper headers and vollies and eventually the midlands mobile disco came into it's own and we had a rave off. That passed a few hours.

Every couple of hours 5 cars at a time would be called forward (in crackly muffled Russian, which we eventually deciphed) to swap the small metal token for a small green piece of card.

More crackly russian finally informed us we could go back to the border, nearly 12 hours after we arrived. We're still there now... and have been advised to switch phones off so i'm putting this thing away for a bit.

...riding in The Alliance at the mo and they've only got the V379- the temporary registration document.

"Where is the official document?"
"This is the official document, but it is temporary."
"This is the end of the European Union, this is Russia."
"Can we come in?"
"We will check. Wait."

...
Estonian side:
"Your documents are fine. Proceed."
Lets see what Russia say...

... It appears a few people have given up before the border and headed back to tallinn to get a ferry to 'sinki. We're ploughing on, well, we've been stationary on a bridge at 3am for the last half hour but we're trying to...

... forms forms forms car search forms insurance ... Just one more barrier ...

Oh, the don't like the temporary V5 again...

... And the final four have made it though!

Still waiting

So, we haven't moved in 6 hours, give or take. It does seem like we might move soon.



Sure... Heard that before :)



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Waiting for Russia

We're currently queued in a big car park, waiting to be 'processed' to enter Russia. The car park is big, full, and very confusing.



The most important thing: do not get your car out of order.



It's all good.



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Dumball One fails to complete...

Well, well, well. This is Gareth. We're not quite sure what he does, but he's british and 'crosses the Russian border quite a lot'.

About 50 miles from the border, he's told us we definately won't be getting in with no V5, in fact we might have problems getting out of Estonia... So Gareth's got himself a new (ish) Shogun and Dumball One is officially out of the (metaphorical) race. We'd been discussing various stratagies and so were more than ready to ditch it but Gareth hadn't and thought we were joking when we just gifted him a car.

And now we're just arriving at the border so it's time for some limbo limbo...

Rumour!

The word on the street is that Dumball One is in Estonia. They may already be in Tallinn by now, but that's unsubstantiated right now.



We're currently in the Hell Hunt bar sampling the 75 different varieties of beer that they have. It's a hard job, but someone has to do it!



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Tallinn is level with Inverness...

Contrary to most Dumballs, we're heading ever north...

So: Riga. Big plush hotel right in the centre of town (which was very pretty btw. Lots of people want to come back so they see the assorted statues and sculptures while not in a car). We arrived mercifully early and although it got pretty nippy later the sun was out so we congregated on the square and got stuck in.

Hilarity obviously ensued. We played a few games of lemon and introduced Latvia to the Dumball and its SPS ways. We even played a few rounds with a wizard who could make strange noises but disappointingly he didn't disappear in a puff me smoke at the end. And the keys to got rod were ceremonious dumped in a pint.

Later, a few cocktails were imbibed and we headed for Roxy nightclub for some podium fever, although only pretty ladies were allowed to ride them. How sexist.

And then on to Estonia. As expected, the police are out in force here, and we all got breathalysed at the border- and all passed with flying colours of course. I'm riding with the red squad today, i might even jump in with the legendary mystery machine in a bit. Losing your car isn't so bad really.

...and it transpires we may also be losing Dumball One soon- the police want to see their V5, which is currently being fedexed to Tallinn...

But the Shevils are back! At least they were seen this morning- don't know if their car made it.

Estonia, and we have data again!

Latvia was bad for data signal for me. You might have noticed from the lack of positioning updates.



However, we just crossed the border into Estonia - complete with mandatory breath test - and rolled on by.



So far, we've been tugged by the rozzers again and breathalyzed a second time, had docs checked, and passed two more stationary rozzers on the side of the road. We've only done about 10 klicks!



So, nice sedentary driving for us today. We've notified the other squadrons of the police presence so hopefully there will be no hiccups. After all, all the designated drivers last night were clearly drinking soft drinks!!!



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Camouflage?

They never though it would work.

You have to make your own fun in Lith...

...uania (there's a limit on the subject length on this phone).

So as expected, Kaunas late on a monday night wasn't up to much, but as every we encouraged, cajoled and bribed a few bars to stay open for us. DITT completed a few challenges and got a few locals involved in the process, instigating the inaugural international subway dash: street rules edition.

And disaster struck for many teams!

1. The hot rods- my team- have lost the sierra! I wasn't in the car at the time, so i'm not quite sure what happened but they pulled over to let some cars by we just couldn't get it started again! A sad loss.

2. The rouge traders fixed their exhaust. Now this may not sound too bad, but the sound me a 4 litre range rover with no silencing at all was nothing short of incredible. It was like a top fuel dragster shouting through a megaphone, and i'll certainly miss it. I'm sure those actuall in the car will be glad to have their ears back though.

3. The Shevil Kenevil's have an unspecified problem with their car and have decided to stay in poland to get it fixed and then catch up. Whether this is a wise stratagy remains to be seen... You'll know as soon as i do. And i can be bothered to blog.

4. And last and most certainly least, Frank Smalley and his 'A-Team' have put in a strong performance for the blind bat award- after leaving Sopot, a few miles from Gdansk, and driving for about 3 hours smalley's crack team of escaped military prisoners arrived on the outskirts of... Gdansk. Oh how i would have loved to have seen his cheeky grin turn to the angry visage of a short essex man.

And i'm sure there's plenty of news from other teams, but not always time to speak to 100 people.

We're now eating up the flat lithuanian miles looking for a log cabin by a river where we can grab a laté...

Raging Horn.... a tale of two sides

Here is the horn at the car park in Colchester one Friday...

Today the drive into Lithuania was 'interesting' not least for the Happy hour hot rods who, having driven meticulously across Poland and with aplomb over some of the least well made roads anywhere in Eastern Europe, decided just a short drive from the hotel, to park it in a ditch! some custom bodywork and a chat with a local policeman later and we are another car down.

So, having waited near a ditch for a good while for the local authorities to sign the necessary papers, we arrived around midnight at the hotel in Kaunas where fellow dumballers had thankfully found the only restaurant open, bribed the waitress to stay open for a another hour to allow us to have a beer and a very welcome pizza after a 13 hour drive! all is well!

jbub x

Woo! Lithuania!

It seems a few posts haven't made to the blog yet, they'll probably all arrive in one go next week some time. Networks can be a bit patchy round here... On a real puter now, so no photo but much faster typing!

Suffice to say a long and eventful days driving behind us, we've made it Kaunas, 'Provisional capital of Lithuania'.

Haven't seen much of Lith' except the roads yet (much better than Poland pot-holed, deeply rutted tarmac) so not much to go on, but we're heading on out to the Crazy House bar, so I'm sure there'll be plenty to say in few hours...

Fw: Hmmm... Ravey

Last night in sopot (the slightly cheaper less touristy place outside gdansk) was ace, we had a wicked night in a podium and laser filled club and everybody made it home safe and sound, all tucked up with a mug of cocoa by 4am.

A long drive ahead today (eta currently 11pm) but we still had time a spot of Dumball spirit: we saw an old man run for and miss his bus, so we open the door, he hopped in, we overtook the bus and dropped him off 2 stops down. He was very happy.

Right now we're passing lots of enticing lakes so it down to the keks and in we go! Make that eta 12am...

Oh yes.

You may not think bringing a 4x4 is the best strategy for driving 2000 miles across Europe. But when most of the motorways in northern Poland are still being built, it's pretty handy to have a couple if you happen to find yourself 'lost' in the beginnings of what will one day be a motorway. Rick's stag was just training for this.

Breakdown tally for the day: just one for the rainbow squadron so far- the Captain's Bitchs just ran out of petrol. About 10 minutes after we stopped to get petrol. Clever girls...

I say so far because we've still got further to go than we drove all of yesterday. Keep truckin'

Hitchhikers

Yay! First hitchhiker of the Dumball, safely dropped off at Biskupiec.



We also just got word that Cowboys and Injuns, and the Large Hardon Collider have had the Saab fixed, and have just left. They've got some mileage to make up but I'm glad they'll be able to go over 60mph now...



Apart from the fact the roads are rubbish!



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Hmmm... Ravey

Last night in sopot (the slightly cheaper less touristy place outside gdansk) was ace, we had a wicked night in a podium and laser filled club and everybody made it home safe and sound, all tucked up with a mug of cocoa by 4am.

A long drive ahead today (eta currently 11pm) but we still had time a spot of Dumball spirit: we saw an old man run for and miss his bus, so we open the door, he hopped in, we overtook the bus and dropped him off 2 stops down. He was very happy.

Right now we're passing lots of enticing lakes so it down to the keks and in we go! Make that eta 12am...

Rolled by the rozzers!

Gdansk...



We rolled a speed trap, and the police pulled in the Festering Welshmen for pulling in too late and 'avoiding' the trap.



200 zloty fine issued.



After a little negotiation, the policeman realised that we're running for charity, handed the money back, and waved us on our way with a smile!



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

"Are you Gdansking?"

"Are you asking?"
"Yes"
"Yes"

Finally a proper hotel on dry land! The Dumball has begun. The hotel is ace, pool, bowling alley very sarajevo-esque for those paying attention.

A standard day's driving with an 1pm arrival time. Unheard of. A mere jaunt across north Poland. I don't think we lost anyone apart from the pirate exhaust.

Now on 2 massive coaches into town, we'll see what the night has to offer...

More Mapping Updates!

So, I've been in the pool, checked out the sauna and put my feet up for five minutes.

I then found myself sat in the bar, with the laptop, fiddling with the Dumball One tracker. I managed to put this (hastily) together:

http://www.zubel.co.uk/dumball-members-location/

Hopefully, it should show the (approximate) location of both Dumball One and me relative to each other. That way you can see where we both are.

It's very rough and ready. I'm going to try to make sure that it works properly but frankly, as per paragraph 2.. I'm in a bar.

I'm also going to look for some willing victims to tag Google Latitude onto their phone. We might be able to get a few more tracks up soon!

YMMV

B.

Denmark - Sweden - Poland

Three countries, 2 days, finally a very nice hotel just out side Gdansk!

Along the way we passed Mr Barker on his travels, and Mr Maidens long lost better looking brother serving cocktails on the boat - see attached photos for both.

We're here, the car is here, though she is starting to sound a little ropey!!

Gdansk!

We made it to Gdansk in one piece.

Currently sat in the lobby of the hotel waiting to check in (we made it a bit early. This is shaping up to be a very odd Dumball year!)

From White squadron - we might lose a car soon. The other Saab in our group has developed aa 'rumbling wheel bearing'. The whole trip today was running at 60 mph tops, otherwise there may have been aa fatal accident. Hopefully we'll be able to find a mechanic this afternoon or tomorrow morning to fix it - Polish style.

News is that we haven't lost any more cars today! A few others are starting to make some odd noises but I'm sure it's nothing that we can't handle :)

I'll leave you for now.. After a 6am start I'm knackered so it's time to avail myself of the swimming pool and the sauna. A short nap and I'll be ready for the bus into the city centre at 7pm. The question is, will I last until the coach returns at 3am!?!

Well, Mat is driving tomorrow. I'll be hanging..

B.

Dumbfest'09

Having arrived at the ferry with plenty of time to spare, we all regrouped for a quick mini festival in a car park.

And we heard the sheep is no more! 4 million cans of expanding foam wasted! Ship sets off soon, and i'm driving tomorrow, so no more updates from me for a while.

The beemer is no more!

Oh dear what can the matter be? A leaking radiator thats what. Luckily for us ros has a cousin who lives 10 minutes from where we broke down...ditch the car at their place, job done!

In other news, the sheep is also dead, wow, what a day...