South Europe, North Africa and the Balkans in 1975 6x6 Volvo

Raredog

Observer
Us:

Morten, 34 and Lisa, 29 from Denmark. Lisa just finished Law-School and I quit my job as a salesman to fulfill our dream: Going to Africa in our car.

The Car:

1975 Volvo TGB13/C304 6x6
Homemade interior, Mercedes diesel-engine, otherwise stock.

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Raredog

Observer
The plan!

Okay, its not really a plan, more like an idea, as none of us don't really like detail planning... Guess we are more the "lets turn left and see what happens" kind of people :wings:

Anyway, in February we drive away for as long as the money goes, which will likely be something along 3-4 months, Lisa is done studying at law school and I have told my boss that we are going on a short holiday...:)

Our motto is; "you won't get lost without a destination" - so we have got all the vaccinations, bought some Malaria-pills and will pack our gear and head south, aiming for Senegal or Guinea...

Google maps says 84 hours... That might be a little optimistic when driving a 40 year old lady named Viola, and trying to avoid as much tarmac as possible smiley

tgb13
 

Raredog

Observer
Hamburger hospitality!

This supposedly "lifetime journey" came to a halt in Hamburg!
Our clutch cable broke....

Vi made a call to Jesper from the Danish Volvo Off-road club and he found the part number, unfortunately Volvo Truck Service didn't want to help us, although they could find the part in the system... We drove around in the city, in rush-hour whiteout clutch, a bit frustrating!

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Jesper posted on the German forum www.c303.de and two helpfully German guys jumped in to help us :)

"Yankee" send a used clutch cable to the Harms family and they served us dinner, and told about their journeys in their Volvo TGB11 :) VERY nice people :)

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Raredog

Observer
USAF Germany

On the road south through Germany's snow covered mountains, the air from the venting system often got cold – without any explanation. After a week or so with toes and fingers nearly felling off, it suddenly hit us; it might be the thermostat shutting off when the engine got colder driving down hill – some tape in front of the radiator and we had nice warm air in the cabin :)

tgb13


Around Hahn in Germany we found an abandoned US Air Force Base, not the most interesting Urbex, but we took a couple of pics.

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Raredog

Observer
Arkham Asylum

We drove along en-route to Luxembourg, for once it didn't rain and we walked around in the city. After that we drove to Belgium where we found an old, fascinating and a bit frightening abandoned asylum. Fans of Batman would probably think of Arkham Asylum :)

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Raredog

Observer
Cognac

In France we got opportunity to test our Omnia-Oven- it makes quite good pizzas :) We have seen a lot of France, in the rush-hour in Paris the car got alarmingly hot! We hadn’t removed the tape from the radiator and one of the wires from the thermostat had broken, so the fan didn´t kick in! Not much fun when there is no chance of parking!
tgb13

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Further down south we had a guided tour including tasting at the Mekouw Destillery in Cognac, Uhm! It appears that Cognac actually tastes quite good when expensive enough :) (The most expensive bottle the sell costs EUR 3000,-)
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We have now lived two weeks in our very few m2 and are getting used to go on with the relatively few items – it is interesting how much of ones live that are used on earning money for things that one not really needs :)
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Where as Morten thought that the priority on this trip would be:

Water

Diesel

Food

It quickly came apparent that Lisa's temper follows that of her feeling of cleanliness, so showers have moved up to the 1. Priority :) We shower where its possible; truck stops and Fitness centers. (most camp sites appears to be closed)

Our prior trips has been to Eastern Europe, and there the interest in the car hasn’t been that much, but here in Southern Europe it is overwhelming! Suddenly we gets awakened by cameras flashing in the middle of the night were we thought that we had parked on a secluded mountain road, people has been taking thousands of photos and we have talked to a lot of people; from truckers to homeless guys, one guy got disappointed when he found out that we were not really hunting zombies, another when we didn’t want to sell the car :)
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Raredog

Observer
5WD

Lisa was behind the wheel, when we on the way down a Spanish Mountain got overtaken by what looked exactly like one of our own rear wheels!:Wow1: Lisa's female intuition immediately told her that something was not right and she calmly braked and parked by the side of the road. Morten sat there speechless seeing the wheel continuing down the road and disappearing in to a bush…!:eek:

After a few minutes search we found both the wheel and the brake drum, both got mounted with one nut from each of the other 5 wheels. We chose to find a camping spot….
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Raredog

Observer
Snowy Spain

We crossed the border to Spain in a small city by the sea, the palm-trees and the atmosphere made us confident that soon it would be warm and nice. We couldn’t be more wrong!
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We woke up to rain, hail and snow and on a rural mountain road where we hadn’t seen any people in hours we hit a snowstorm! In a hairpin where the road wasn’t visible we got the wheels down in a ditch and had to winch ourselves back up.
12-15 degrees of inclination, a ditch and snow was a bit of a problem!
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We continued up the mountain and after about15 km we saw a fellow stuck in the snow in his Ford Mondeo, the snow was now ½ m deep at most places, so he must have been there for a while. With hand gestures we found out that he would be lucky if we towed him, so we towed him 20 km through the snowstorm and up to 1 meter snow, finally we came to a bigger road and he drove off with a “Gracias” and a big smile. We have never experienced such a snowstorm, a bit exiting when you are that far away from nearest civilization – but it was nice to have 6x6 with portal axles :)
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It might be the route that we randomly have chosen, but Spain seems very rural, even on tarmac we can drive for hours without seeing any other cars or people. But the scenery is ever changing and beautiful :)
 

Raredog

Observer
Freeze!

The advantage of having a house on wheels is that you can change the view as you like, theoretically it might be wonderful to wake up on a quiet mountain – just not when you are out of gas for the heater and it is so cold that the inside of the windows are covered with ice! We had a little bit of gas left for our gas-cooker, which we used to make lukewarm coffee, not that great a pleasure… One might have expected this in the German mountains, but in Spain??!
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Normally we have only travelled in the summer, so therefore we didn't want to use money on a diesel-heater... This was one point where we regretted that!
 

Raredog

Observer
Thanks for the comments :)
Been following this and other adventure sites for years, up until now we have only been on 2-3 week trips, but suddenly it was our turn to go on the big trip :wings:
Of course its not a year long circumnavigation, but it was enough for us (and our wallet!) :)
 

Raredog

Observer
Still Spain

Our GPS is not really good at guiding one along, but it is really great at finding off road, even when you tell it to drive at the fastest route to the nearest city! It succeeded in leading us down a small path, unlike the roads it wasn’t that many corners, it was more like a straight route down with pretty steep inclinations and no traces after other cars in recent years! It took quite some time with 5-8 km/h but it was pretty exciting :)
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We were lucky and saw some wild mountain goats - they have pretty impressive off road capabilities :)
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