Tweed at Speed
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| Pete and Oliver leave Goodwood |
What's it all about?
The Mongol Rally is a car rally that begins in the UK and ends in Mongolia and is described as the ‘greatest adventure in the world’. In the spirit of adventure, teams are tasked with finding their own route from the UK to Mongolia, in a 1.2cc vehicle which must qualify as inappropriate for the task. There is no support provided and teams are expected to make the circa 10,000 mile trip over mountains, deserts and some of the most remote, challenging terrain on the planet.
Tweed at Speed, a team made up of Trayport employees, Pete, Oliver and Ben hope to visit, among other places, France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstn, Kazakhstan, Russia and finally Mongolia – in 6 weeks. There is no guarantee that they will get there, but they will be giving it their best shot.
Charity
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| Tweed at Speed's Ben and Lee at Goodwood |
Adventure aside, the aim of the rally is to raise money for charity and Tweed at Speed will be raising money for the Christina Nobel Children’s Foundation – a charity dedicated to serving underprivileged children with the hope of helping each child maximise their life potential (www.cncf.org).
Trayport is pleased to be able to sponsor Tweed at Speed in their cause.
Tweed at Speed's progress
Week 1:
On Saturday, 23rd July the 500 teams partaking in the Mongol Rally set off from Goodwood, Chichester. Tweed at Speed almost didn’t make the start as theirs was the first car in the Mongol Rally to break down. Fortunately, with a little help from some fellow ralliers, they got going and have made their way through Bruge, Nuremburg and, despite two blown out tyres on the Autobahn, arrived on schedule in the Czech Republic on 25 July 2011. Next stop, Austria.
Week 2:
In the last week, Tweed at Speed have travelled 3,710 miles and have made it through Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. They've enjoyed the Transfagrasan highway, managed to get a 35p parking fine (in Sivas, Turkey) and thanks to Google Maps spent an hour and half in the pitch darkness driving round fields of sunflowers in Bucharest. Fortunately, their cars are still running, although the red car has had to have its exhaust welded back together and there has been an instance of complete brake failure, which seems to have rectified itself. Next stop, Iran – provided they can get through the mountain of paper work required to cross the border.
Week 3:
Tweed at Speed made it successfully across the Iranian border on 2nd August and spent the best part of the week experiencing Iranian urban traffic (in one day they saw six accidents, one between a car and a wheelbarrow in an underpass), getting lost and enjoying the hospitality of friends in Tehran. The highlights of their time in Iran – Esfahan and Perseolis, which in their words was “‘well worth the long, hot, foodless drive... a spectacular monument to the glory of the Acheamenid empire”.
The team arrived at the Iran-Turkmenistan border full of doubt - they didn't have the official letter of invitation required to get a visa, nor did they know how much it might cost. All they had was a letter from the Adventurists, in Russian, saying everything was going to be fine. Were they going to have to back-track through Iran?
Week 4:
In the end, Tweed at Speed made it across the border in only 4 hours and headed straight to Ashgabat, where the exhaust of the red car had to welded back together - again. They left Ashgabat for the heart of the Karkum desert, where declarations that their vehicles would not make it along the desert track to the gas crater were proved correct. After 8 hours of digging their way out of the sand, they finally made it to their destination in a vehicle more suited to the task.
Since Turkmenistan, the Tweed at Speed team have made it through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and are now in Kazakhstan. They have travelled 7,043 miles and are looking forward to reaching their end destination.
Week 5:
Leaving Kazakhstan, the Tweed at Speed team made their way to Barnaul, Russia – the northerly most point of their trip, before making their way to the Russian/Mongolian border – a crossing that took 24 hours. From there, Tweed at Speed lived up to their name. Despite filling the blue car's engine with water twice and driving the red car into two separate ditches in one day, Tweed at Speed made it to Ulaantabar 6 days ahead of schedule.
Congratulations to the Tweed at Speed team who travelled 10,305 miles, had an amazing adventure and raised £2,458 for the Christina Nobel Foundation.
