My Travels - United Kingdom 1999 - 1.day

7.August 1999

At morning we woke up at 7 AM. We spent some time to move all things in the car. Then we assigned positions. Boris was driver and I was navigator. At the back seats was secondary driver Marcel and navigator was Eva. I had prepared papers with route from internet and maps of Europe. We stopped at first time in Bratislava Tesco store. There we needed to buy Pikao (condensed milk with sugar and cacao) for our driver. Our last stop in Slovakia was at the near gas station. There we bought gas and after consultation with our company manager also oil to engine, because we had low level. Shortly we had small accident at the near parking place. There we touched staying Škoda 120 car, while we were moving back. But nothing bad happened, it was only touch and we continued to Berg, boundaries to Austria.

There we were at 9 AM. From there we crossed Austria through Wien and Linz. We went to Germany crossing boundaries in Passau. We didn't see some customs. Inside Europe Union there was nobody. There is no speed limit on German highways, and we increased our speed to 150 km per hour. We continued through Regensburg, Nurnberg, Frankfurt and Koln to Netherlands. We crossed Benelux through Aachen, Liege and Brugge. Our target at Europe continent was Calais in France, from where we had to cross Channel by ferry to Dover in Great Britain. We did only short rests on the parking places or gas stations near of highways. In France I first time tried to be driver. It was also my last try. I didn't have so much experiences with driving car.When I was 15 minutes overtaking truck on highway, all passengers in the car became silent. At the first stop I was replaced with remark that I am very good navigator, but very bad driver. Near of Calais we recognized that we didn't have international automobile mark. In France it was impossible to buy it. We made it using pen and paper. We pasted it from inside to rear window. We reached Calais before midnight. We decided to buy tickets from P&O company. In short time we were boarded on their ferry. We left France at 1:30 AM. We will be in the UK in 2 hours.

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My Travels - United Kingdom 1999 - Preparations

I visited United Kingdom together with my friends from my FCE English course. Our guide for England and especially for Scotland was our teacher from that course, Samantha. Sam is from Perth and she helped us to know her beautiful country.
When Sam returned to Scotland, we stayed in contact. We changed some letters and e-mails. In 1998 we invited Sam to Donovaly, here in Slovakia. She felt fine, and she promised us, that next year we will meet in UK. And we agreed to visit her. Our group from our last trip to Iceland a little bit changed. Instead of Emil and Hilda we took our friend Eva.

The biggest problem was to find possible transport. United Kingdom is not cheap country, and we wanted to took also some food with us. With accommodation we hadn't problem, because we decided to sleep in camps. At last we decided that we need some car. But nobody from us was owner of car. It was necessary to find solution of that. To rent a car was so expensive solution for us. At last after asking, I decided to rent car, from my company. They gave me good conditions and it looked like a good choice. My colleague Marcel, heard that we wanted to visit UK. He asked me if he could to join us. He was experienced traveler and we decided to add him to our passengers list. It decreased our expenses, because we could split them among four people. After solving our transport, we had to find places for visit. We met together more times, thinking above the map and books, and we wrote down all interesting places. When we selected the most interesting places, we created route to UK and back with help of this route planner.

We decided to go for 3 weeks on August. Now we had crew, we solved our transport, we had points for visiting, we had also route, but we hadn't visa. To visit UK, were visa required. To acquire them, we had to collect a lot of papers. When we had all of them, we met together on early morning near of British Council. We spent a lot of time in queue. Then we were interviewed. We were successful, fortunately.

At the end of July we started with next preparations in positive mood. But time with good messages finished. I was informed in my company, that our car is not available for our term. I was so sad, because it looked like that our trip is away. But at last Marcel managed another car in the company. The problem was, that it was available only for 2 weeks. It was necessary to reduce visited places and to change our route. We did it. Then we prepared list of food for 2 weeks. We decided to collect all food and people, night before trip, in our flat. It was our starting point for this trip. Near of flat we parked our rented car, Škoda Felicia Combi. It was last night before trip, and we went to sleep full of expectations.

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Destination Unknown - United Kingdom

Next part of Destination Unknown videos is from capital city of UK, from London. From city with a lot of sightseeings. Follow Michael Murphy to know this beautiful city.

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London, United Kingdom - Destination Unknown