Mr Flibble's Kosovan Adventure (long, with lots of pictures)

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
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For those of you who haven’t worked it out (probably most if not all of you), I was the one who responded to trougher’s invitation to join him on an aid convoy to Kosovo.

And here’s my diary. I’m afraid it’s pretty long (currently 8 pages of A4, excluding photos, in the wordprocessor; I’ll probably add stuff as I copy it onto trucknet, making it even longer…). It’ll probably take me a few days to post all of it, so please bear with me (it’s taken three evenings just to prepare the photos :exclamation: ). Thanks. :slight_smile:

Warning - there are about 80 photos :open_mouth: . I’ve reduced the sizes down to 800x600, but it’s still 7 MB worth, so if you’re on a slow connection, you might want to go have a cup of coffee whilst the page is loading… :wink:

PS: All done now. Hope you enjoy it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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Where :smiley:

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lol

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Thursday 22nd

Started early ready for the drive down from Chelmsford to Dagenham. The weather was rather misty and cold as we joined the M25, but cleared up.

Arrived at Dagenham at 6am, and found our trucks - two 10-year-old Iveco 400s with Eaton Twin Split gearboxes , pulling step-frame supercube curtainside trailers. Loaded all our stuff into the truck while the local amateur radio group sorted out our CBs, then filled up with diesel before boarding the Ford ferry at 8am. The crew of the “Symphorine” were all Russian except for the captain and first officer who were Belgian. At 9am the ferry started to shudder as the captain engaged the propellor, signalling our departure. I reset my watch for continental time, and wandered around until lunch at 12.

After a lunch of spinach soup and chicken with rice, I retired to my cabin to try to get some sleep. However, the cabin was rather warm and light, so I only got about half an hour’s worth of sleep before dinner at 5pm.

After dinner of fish salad, pork chops + veg and apricot dessert, I took a shower (very good :wink: ), then waited around until 9pm when we were due to dock at Vlissengen. I popped into the crew mess room and found one of the crew members watching a DVD of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” dubbed into Russian. He offered to change it to English, but I told him that it was OK, and he should carry on watching it himself. However, he said that he had already seen it too many times, so we started chatting about what we were doing on the ship, and after a few language difficulties, I managed to explain what we were doing. He seemed suitably impressed :slight_smile:

We arrived about half an hour early, drove off the ferry and waited for the trailers to arrive, which they did a few minutes later.

Despite our visit from the local amateur radio group, our CB seemed to be dead, and we couldn’t work out why. Never mind, there wasn’t much we could do about it except put our truck in the middle of the convoy so that we wouldn’t be left behind or run off into the distance. We set off around the Ford base, but obviously took a wrong turning as the security van caught us up and told me to follow him. I managed to 3-point-turn the rig with a bit of help to make sure I didn’t overhang the railway line, and followed them to the exit.

We set off down the road towards the motorway, but I was having some problems with gears as it was my first time with an Eaton twin splitter box. I kept on getting neutral, as the splitter wouldn’t engage the gear I wanted. As we reached the motorway, though, I was beginning to master it, and we pressed on to Aachen, and parked up at Aachenland MSA for the night. The truck park was completely rammed full, so we had to park on one of the access roads into the MSA (although we made sure that trucks could still get past OK).

221 km covered.

Our cab only had one bunk, so I inflated my airbed and climbed into the back of the trailer on top of the load.

I found out during the night that my brand new airbed had a puncture, and I had to get up every few hours and reinflate it :frowning:

Our trailer being picked up by the shunter for loading onto the ferry:

The view from the dock at Dagenham. Our ferry can be seen on the right-hand side:

(click on the picture for a more detailed version)

Leaving Dagenham:


Going under the QE2 bridge (Dartford Crossing) - Duck!

Arrival in Vlissingen. Suffered from a bit of camera shake due to long shutter speed:

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MrFlibble:
you might want to go have a cup of coffee whilst the page is loading… :wink:

Now you are just teasing me. :wink: :smiley: :smiley:

OK, where is it? :smiley:

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My God you guys are impatient…

I’m posting a day at a time so I don’t lose it all if something crashes. I’m also adding in the pics as I go, which is why it takes a while.

Anyway…

Friday 23rd
The next morning I popped into the services stop and bought myself a torch - I stupidly left my Maglite back in the UK when we stayed overnight before going down to Dagenham. After a quick wash and some breakfast, we started off through the bulk of Germany.

For some reason our CB was now working fine (well, the range was a bit low, and the transmission quality was poor, but it was at least turning on.)

We made good progress through Germany, but a navigation error at Köln took us down the A61 instead of the A3 - no problem, we can just cut across on the A48 at Koblenz. However, the other artic was having problems - the brakes were overheating on the trailer, and it was occasionally losing power. We pulled into a layby on the A48, and tried to fix it. After a bit of time, we started off again, but the other unit was still losing power, so they pulled into the services at Montabour and called for the mechanic. It’s brakes were also seriously overheating on the downhill stretches to the point where there were clouds of black smoke pouring off the back of the trailer - I thought they were going to have a trailer fire. I radioed them and told them to use engine brakes as much as possible until the next stop, which they duly did. Meanwhile, as we were running behind, we missed them turn off, so sailed straight past. No problem; we realised they were in there, so I just fired up the SatNav, and told it to take us back there, which it did admirably. Once we’d arrived, we had lunch while waiting for the mechanic. They found the fault with the sticking brakes (a kinked suzie), so the mechanic only had the power loss problem to deal with.

Eventually the mechanic arrived and diagnosed a fuel filter problem, which we were rather skeptical of, but we let him change it anyway. Afterwards, the truck seemed to be running better, so we set off again.

Because of the delays, we were now significantly behind schedule, so we drove almost continually past Frankfurt and Würzburg until midnight, stopping only for driver changes. As it moved towards dusk, we noticed that our CB stopped working again, and I twigged what was happening - for some reason, the cigar lighter socket on the truck was wired such that it switched off when the headlights were turned on :confused: . We turned our headlights off again and radioed to the rest of the team what the problem was, and that we’d be dropping off CB when it got too dark to drive without headlights.

Unfortunately, I took a wrong turning at Würzburg and accidentally went onto the A7 and got split up from the group. Since we had no CB (it was now completely dark), we couldn’t radio the other trucks to tell them what had happened, so we had to resort to mobile phones. It was a “butterfly”-style junction, so I tried to go round all four of the loops, but unfortunately one of the loops didn’t exist, so I had to go to the next junction and turn around there; One of the turnings was from a 1-way sliproad onto a 2-way road, and I came out on the wrong side of the road :blush: but trougher shouted at me quickly enough (so that’s what co-drivers are useful for… :slight_smile: ) . The missed turning was recovered quickly, and we were back on the correct road chasing after the rest of the group. The road was so bumpy at one point that I thought I’d had a blowout, but it was actually OK.

We caught up with the other two trucks at Aurach where we parked up for the night after a meal of schnitzel and chips. It was a bit noisy being quite close to the road, but I managed a reasonable night’s sleep. I thought my airbed leak was due to a missing plug which I hadn’t put in the previous night, but I was wrong, so I still had to reinflate it every couple of hours.

480 km covered.

Some random Autobahn bridge somewhere:

The truck being fixed:

The broken truck parked while we stopped for lunch:

Back on the road again :slight_smile: :

The view over Koblenz from the first breakdown point:

(again, click the image for a higher-res version)

Anyway, off to watch HIGNFY now. More later.

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The little appertizer has got us hungry for the main course so we are waiting with anticipation ,so far wonderful pictures and nice posting

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absolutely fantastic excellent pictures and an excellent read lets have the rest… you have set a precident for future diaries :wink: :smiley:

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AAgghhhh Memories for someone on here an iveco with the cab tilted :laughing: :laughing:

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Come on wheres the rest :smiley: :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:

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Saturday 24th

During the night I tried using my new torch. It worked for about 5 minutes before the bulb blew. So much for quality German products :unamused:

I started the day by wiring up a dedicated power feed direct from the truck battery to the CB, so that we could stay in contact. I did the battery end first, then cannibalised a 12 V splitter that I “borrowed” of one of the other artic drivers and connected it to the cab end.

After the previous day’s delays, we wanted to make up some time, so we started at 07:45, and lunched on the move, running through Nürnberg, Plzen, Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Gyor, Budapest, and headed down towards the border.

We had thought that the Hungarian truck ban started at midnight, but as we stopped at the Slovak/Hungarian border, the others got chatting to a friendly Romanian truck driver who told them that the ban actually starts at 8am. Since we were no longer under such pressure, we stopped for food at a good restaurant just south of Budapest before continuing on.

While we were stopped at the Slovak/Hungarian border, one of the other truck drivers (a veteran convoyer) told me that the longest wait they’d ever had was 39 hours at that border. Without any facilities whatsoever. :open_mouth:

Somewhere on the way down (I think it was vaguely close to Budapest), our lead truck was pulled over by the police - probably for a routine check. However, as the policewoman realised that (a) if they stopped one of us, all three of us would stop, (b) we were all carrying humanitarian aid and (c) we were all English (and therefore spoke no Hungarian), she thought better of it, and waved us on our way - she probably didn’t want the hassle of dealing with a whole convoy of English trucks… :laughing:

We stopped for fuel in Szeged (last chance to buy diesel in Euros), and then had a minor diversion via Kiskunhalas when we took the wrong turning in some roadworks in Szeged. I stopped for a quick [zb] in the 24-hour Tesco in Kiskunhalas on the way :sunglasses:

We finally stopped at Tompa just to the west of Szeged before the Serbian border at about 4am.

During the “minor diversion”, I understood why some people really rave over the Eaton Twin Split box. Going down lots of winding A- and B-roads, I just needed to use low, middle and high 4th, and I just had to blip the accelerator to change gear. Really nice.

1187 km covered :open_mouth:

I solved my airbed problem by temporarily “reassigning” some of the aid to someone in much greater need - I used some of the blankets to make a nice soft bed on top of the boxes :wink: . Rest assured that all the blankets were re-bagged ready for distribution by the time we arrived in Kosovo.

Another random Autobahn bridge somewhere:

The queue for the border (I think it was the German-Czech border):

One for Ben - sorry, didn’t catch it close enough to get the numbers :frowning:

The hill down into Prague - the hoops on the left support the overhead cables for the trams:

Yes, even the Czech Republic have got Tesco RDCs…

…and Tesco stores:

Arrival at the Slovakia-Hungary border:

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getting better every minute come on mate you can not stop now please,

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Sunday 25th

LGVs are banned in Hungary after 8am, so we spent most of the day in the pub (disaster :wink: ), waiting for the rest of the convoy to turn up. There’s a bicycle shop about 100m from our parking area (and about 1 km from the border), so we spent a bit of time looking at bikes; I was thinking of buying one, as I’d been told they were really cheap (EUR50 for a whole adult-sized bike), until I tried to pick one up - it weighed a ton - now I know why they’re cheap… :unamused:

We contacted the rest of the convoy to find out where they were, and they told us that one of them had had a rear blowout, and another had had an argument with a duck (the windscreen had lost the argument).

At 9pm most of the parking area emptied of the other trucks as the ban finished. We persuaded the restaurant to stay open for the remainder of the convoy, as we estimated their ETA to be about 11pm. They were all legal to run in Hungary, as they were all 7.5t or smaller.

They pulled in as per our estimate at 11pm, an hour after I went to bed.

0 km covered :wink:

The whole convoy parked up near the Hungarian/Serbian border:


(click on the image for hi-res version)

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Monday 26th

Up early for a briefing at 7:30 am, then off to the Serbian border. However, as we started up our engine, we noticed that it wasn’t idling smoothly - it was occasionally rising as if someone was tapping the throttle. After a bit of consultation, we decided to carry on rather than hold up the convoy, so after a quick fuel stop, we headed towards the border, where we arrived at 10am.

After going through the initial passport control, we parked up in the compound, and started the paperwork to leave Hungary.

An hour or so later, and that paperwork was done ,and we were clear to leave the EU. However, in the meantime, another truck in the convoy was also having difficulties, so someone had gone off to get a spare fuel filter. We had another look at our problem, and decided that there wasn’t much we could do about it, and that we would carry on into Serbia when the other truck was running. Whilst we were waiting, we had a nice cooked “breakfast” (although by now it was past midday).

Eventually the other truck got going again, and we went through another checkpoint where they checked the back of the trailer (all OK), then we left Hungary and the EU, and entered no man’s land.

A couple of hundred metres later, we stopped again for another passport check, to enter Serbia. This was completed quickly, and we parked up again, for the remaining paperwork to be done.

A few more hours later, and we were successfully into Serbia, at 18:15 - 8 1/4 hours after we’d arrived, and only a couple of hours of that delay were due to mechanical problems - you guys think Tesco are bad…

We started off down the road, through Subotica and Novi Sad. However, as time went on, our problem got worse - as well as the throttle blipping, the engine started cutting out completely. The first time was whilst climbing a long hill; I stupidly tried to change gear as I slowed down, but that meant that the splitter disengaged the first gear, and as the engine was completely dead, the revs could never match, so I was left with a box full of neutrals. I started to feel the clutch go heavy, then the power steering went as well, so I had to wrestle the wheel to keep on the road. After a couple of attempts, the engine restarted on the key, and we were off and running again.

This happened a few more times along the road, so we initially pulled into an earlier hotel than we had planned, but since they had no food available (it was now after 11pm), I decided that I could cope with the problem and get to the planned hotel which was another 30 km down the road.

As we started up the next hill, I radioed the rest of the convoy to tell them to stay out of my way as I wanted to keep up as much speed as possible up the hill, which they duly did - we only weighed 20 tonnes, whereas every other vehicle was pretty much at maximum weight, so we sailed up the hill almost on the limiter whilst everyone else had to slow down :sunglasses: .

A few more engine deaths later, and we finally arrived at the hotel we’d been recommended. The recommendation turned out to be pretty poor, however, as the place was an absolute dump - the rooms were dirty, the en-suites were stained dark brown and stank badly, and we decided to use our own bedding. We had a vaguely acceptable meal (although I didn’t eat my chicken as it didn’t look cooked), and settled down to sleep.

260 km covered.

A better one for Ben - this time in the parking area at the Hungarian/Serbian border:

Parked on the Serbian side of the border whilst the paperwork is being done:

Looking back at most of the rest of the convoy as we’re leaving the Serbian side of the border:

Approaching the first Serbian toll booth; we didn’t pay any road tolls in Germany or Serbia :wink:

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Tuesday 27th

Started out early at 0700 by tipping the cab to replace the fuel filter. This was done in an hour or so, then we set off again. Unfortunately, I had to skip breakfast to empty my stuff out of the cab, which was then spread across about four of the other trucks. The two mechanics rode in our truck whilst we took their places in their respective trucks. After a few miles, it became apparent that they had not fixed the problem, so we carried on to customs in Nis, leaving them behind.

After clearing customs (which took the customary couple of hours), we checked into the hotel in Nis at about 1600 - there was no point in trying to reach the Kosovan border, as we wouldn’t get through until the following day anyway.

At the hotel, we met up with our own truck; it had had its fuel filter completely bypassed, with a hose going direct from the filler cap (secured with gaffa tape) into the fuel pump. However, this had not worked, and the engine was still stalling. We got into contact with the people at Iveco who told us that someone would be with us at around midday the following day, so we decided that trougher and I would transfer to the other unit, one of that unit’s drivers and one of the mechanics would stay back with ours, and the other unit driver would ride in the mechanic’s place.

While we were stopped, the mechanic mentioned to me that the previous night he had assumed that I was just being a newbie drama queen when I’d been saying that it was hard work driving, but having driven our truck all day, he was now rather impressed that we’d managed to get it as far as we did… :sunglasses:

In contrast to the previous night’s hotel, this one was very good, and after a shower, a good meal and some organization for the following day, we settled down to sleep.

Parked up at the (good) hotel:



(click on image for hi-res version)

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Wednesday 28th

Got up at 05:50 to take all the rest of my stuff out of our cab as we thought that there could be a good chance that Ford might decide that the unit was beyond economical repair, and scrap it in Serbia. We had expected to be leaving at 0700, but we were still there at 0800 when the Iveco man turned up :open_mouth: . We explained the problem, and then left with the convoy.

After leaving the motorway, the roads started to deteriorate, becoming more potholed - many of the potholes were probably due to shelling during the war.

After a couple of hours of driving, we reached the Kosovo border, and the whole rigmarole started again.

It took a few hours to get out of Serbia, at which point we spent a few more hours getting into Kosovo.

Whilst we were waiting to get out of Serbia, we had a call from the guys back with our truck, saying that they had fixed the problem, and that they were on their way down to meet us. On their way down, the low brake pads warning light came on in the cab :unamused: . They arrived just as we were leaving Serbia, and tucked in on the end of the convoy (after getting some very dirty looks from all the queueing trucks they jumped past that had been held up by our convoy :blush: ), and we were off into Kosovo.

The Kosovan roads were even worse than the Serbian roads, with more frequent potholes, but we got to Pristina unscathed (although some of the roads through the smaller towns like Prokuplije were very tight in the artic), and pulled into customs in Pristina in the early afternoon to get the customs paperwork done. We went into the cafe on the other side of the road for a drink while paper was shuffled. A couple of hours later, we were ready to go, but they tried to charge us for parking in the customs parking area.

Get this: Customs force you to park in their parking area while they sort out your paperwork; they then charge you for parking. How much? EUR 30 (about £20) per truck. For two hours. That’s EUR 390 (£260) for the whole convoy. And you think UK MSAs are bad?

Our illustrious leader went back over to the customs office and “did a RobK” at them, and emerged a few minutes later with a letter confirming that we did not have to pay the parking charge :laughing:

From customs we then went to the warehouse, where we arrived in the early evening, and met the “airborne division” (those who flew in directly to Pristina rather than drive a truck down). We got most of the 7.5t trucks unloaded that evening, but we didn’t start on the artics. A couple of the 7.5t trucks were also pre-loaded for the next day before we went off to our hotel on the south side of Pristina (the warehouse was on the north side). The hotel had a total of 12 rooms, so as we numbered 34 people in total, it was a little cramped - all us 4 artic drivers were put in the same room (although we each had our own bed). After a shower and some food I disappeared off to bed.

118 km covered.

The road through Prokuplje:

The border guards don’t like you taking pictures of the Serbian/Kosovan border, so all I’ve got is a picture facing in to Kosovo as we left the border crossing. You can see the Hungarian vignettes in the bottom left-hand corner, and the very edge of the Czech vignette on the left-hand edge:

Arriving into Pristina:

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Thursday 29th

First day of distribution.

Started early in the warehouse with a briefing, where we met the warehouse owner - a local who runs a flour business, but let us use one floor of his warehouse for free. We then finished off the unloading of the remaining 7.5t trucks, and loading up most of the 7.5t trucks for distribution, then went off to our first drops.

Our first drop was in Kosovo Polje (effectively a western suburb of Pristina). Off one of the major through-roads was a narrow muddy track, which took us round to a shanty-town behind some buildings - you wouldn’t know it was there unless someone told you about it. We decided that the track was too narrow for the truck due to the overhanging building roof and the rutted path causing the truck body to lean over, so we left the truck parked next to the main road, and used the ■■■■■■ vehicle (a pickup) to ferry a number of loads into the drop location.

13 families lived in this shanty-town, so we set out 13 piles of clothes, food, blankets, etc., then our Mother Theresa guide allocated them to families.

The access road to the drop:

I’m afraid I didn’t have time to take any photos of the actual drop itself.

The second drop was on the edge of a road next to the railway station; as we were setting out the aid, a number of other people started turning up to try to get stuff; once we’d distributed the allocated aid out we gave a bit more out to the people who turned up, but it started to get a bit out of hand so we packed up and left.

The second drop:

Pristina railway station - Birmingham New Street it ain’t…

The third drop was much quieter - only 6 families living in a building next to an industrial park; the only problem was keeping out of the way of the trucks trying to get into the businesses on-site.

The third drop:

The last drop was quite a bit further away - on the south side of Pristina, near the airport. It was one long building with a number of floors, with a family living in each room - 23 families in total. Naturally, this required a bit more organisation, so we kept all the locals out of the way whilst we laid out the aid into piles, then allocated it out.

The last drop:


(click on the image for a hi-res version)

After we’d finished giving out the aid, one of the families generously invited us in to see their home.

This family of 8 (2 adults, 6 children) live in this one room:

The corridor in the building:

The view from their window, overlooking the war-damaged building opposite:

Aid in the warehouse:

After finishing off the last drop, we went back to the warehouse and loaded for the next day before going back to the hotel.

One of the things that surprised me about Pristina was the number of petrol stations - one of the locals told me that there are 1500 petrol stations in Kosovo, for a population of 2 million. Something tells me that market forces will bring that number down…

Also, it seems that everyone who has a property next to a main road and doesn’t have another job has bought themselves a pressure washer and opened a car wash (“Auto Larje”) - in some cases there’s one every 50-100 metres for at least 1 km. In the middle of the afternoon, they all seem to come out and wash their forecourts - partly to dampen down the dust, but also partly to show off their hardware, I suspect…

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Friday 30th

By this time, we had worked out the rather comical method by which breakfast was distributed at the hotel. Breakfast was a choice of fried eggs, cheese omlette, ham omlette, mushroom omlette, or the “non-egg breakfast” which consisted of ham and a boiled egg :confused: . The waiter would come down, take a number of orders, go back to the kitchen, pick up whatever was waiting, and walk down the table announcing what he was carrying. It may or may not match what you actually ordered. If no-one claimed what he was carrying, he’d take it back to the bar, turn around, and walk back down the table announcing it as something else - ham omlettes often became cheese omlettes, and vice-versa… :laughing:

I wasn’t feeling too good, and didn’t want to be too far from a working toilet (if you know what I mean :wink: ), so I asked to spend the day in the warehouse. Whilst I had been out on drops on Thursday, the people who stayed at the warehouse had unloaded the two artics, so we now had many pallets of tinned food to distribute. After we spent an hour or so tidying up the warehouse, I spent most of the rest of the day loading up pallets of tins for each truck ready for the following day so that they would be easy to load that evening, whilst Trougher drove the FLT to move stuff around. We had a power cut for most of the afternoon (during the week we learned that the power is typically off for at least a couple of hours every day), so recharging the FLT became a bit of a problem.

Whilst out trying to deliver a portacabin that we’d brought down (containing a shower and toilet block), the other artic unit broke down.

The weather was absolutely terrible - it rained heavily all day, so when the crews arrived back from their drops, we decided not to do the preload for the following day but just go back to the hotel.

Aid being loaded in the warehouse:

(click on the picture for a hi-res version)

19

Saturday 1st

Out on drops today; this time I went up into the mountains on the south side of Pristina. The weather was still rather wet, but it was now only occasional light rain, although the ground was completely soaked.

As we left we were told that the roads we were going to use were “treacherous when wet” :open_mouth: , so we would have to take it very carefully.

The scenery was very nice going up into the mountains, although we couldn’t see a huge amount of it due to the weather. The “roads” were actually compressed muddy/rocky tracks, and were therefore very slippery. We were wheelspinning up some of the hills, and slipping down some of them :open_mouth: . Our first drop was in a school which acted as a reception centre for a number of families living within a few miles. We distributed the aid, paying special attention to one person’s pile to make sure they got off early as there was an ambulance waiting outside to take them to hospital for kidney surgery.

On leaving the school, we were told that there was nowhere ahead to turn round, so we’d have to reverse back down the mountain. There was one potential place for turning a few hundred metres back, but we decided against it as it would mean going onto some rather soft-looking grass, and at that point we’d have our back wheels stuck, with the truck at 90 degrees to the road, and so anyone trying to pull us out would be trying to pull us sideways. Eventually, we had to reverse a couple of miles back down the mountain before we could turn round.

On the way to the second drop, a group of 4 teenage/early-20s guys in a car tried to pass us on a bit that was too narrow; they put a couple of wheels on the soft mud and sank straight in. We grabbed a rope out the back of the truck, and a passing car pulled them out (they passed at exactly the right time, and it was easier to get them to pull rather than manouevre the truck into position); some happy hand-shaking ensued, and we were relieved to get away, as it could easily have turned rather nasty…

We found the second drop, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there. Our guide went off to find someone, and came back to say that they’d all left because we were later than promised, and had assumed we weren’t coming because of the bad weather (we were running rather late because we were keeping the speed right down on the slippery mountain roads). A local offered to let us use his building to store the stuff and distribute it to the relevant people, and whilst we prefer to give the aid directly to the people it’s intended for (to ensure no-one syphons any of it off), our Mother Theresa guide seemed to be sufficiently reassured that this would actually happen (since there were some of the recipients there, and they could see the stuff arriving, and what was actually being delivered). Our only other option was to take the load back, and if we did this, it was unlikely that we could come back on another day, as we were running so far behind schedule. We had been strongly advised to make sure we were out of the mountains before darkness fell, for security reasons :open_mouth: .

Back to the warehouse, and reload for the next day, then off to the hotel.

Finding our way to the first drop:

Watch those brakes!

Just around the corner from the first drop:

Are you sure you want to come down this road?

Are you really sure?

Slip-slidin’ away…

The school next to our second drop:

And the school kitchen with what used to be the cold store:

20

Sunday 2nd

Started off by taking our two Iveco units solo down to Camp Clarke - the Irish KFOR (Kosovo FORce) base, as they had promised to get their mechanics to give them a good going over to find any remaining faults. I’m afraid that I don’t have any photos of the base as the military in Kosovo don’t like you taking pictures (probably like the military everywhere else).

From Camp Clarke we went on down to a drop south of Pristina on the Prizren road (I can’t remember where exactly). There were about 100 families to be supplied in two drops from two trucks at one location; we manage d to organise quite a lot of help from the locals in doling out the piles of stuff, so that we ended up with a couple of us passing boxes out of the truck and the rest just watching and supervising the locals to make sure that they did it correctly and fairly :slight_smile:

Everyone seemed to go away happy, and we set off back to Camp Clarke to pick up our units.

When we got there, they didn’t seem to have moved at all, and I assumed that they hadn’t been looked at yet, but once we found the mechanic, he told us that yes, they’d had a look, and they were all done. The other unit had got water into the electrics box behind the driver’s seat, so they’d dried it all out and sealed it up, and done a general going-over on the rest of the truck.

Before leaving, we unloaded the remainder of our aid that we hadn’t distributed (the Irish KFOR had previously promised to distribute any remaining aid that we couldn’t), and had a cup of coffee. Most of the soldiers were in the TV room watching the Chelsea-Liverpool game, and we heard the first goal :slight_smile:

Back to the warehouse, but we didn’t do any pre-loading as we had all been invited out for a meal by the staff at a local prison that was receiving help from us (a couple of the convoyers were teaching hairdressing to the inmates as a skill to keep them occupied and possibly give them work once they come out).

Kosovo’s two power stations. Both coal-fired, running of the locally-mined but very low quality “brown coal”. They are attributed as being one of the major reasons why Pristina is nearly always covered in mist or fog most of the day. Local rumours suggest that the pollution filters are taken out at night. When the US army surveyed Kosovo for a risk assessment to decide where to site their base, they decided that the most dangerous place in terms of casualties was down-wind of the two power stations. There are still some refugee camps in the shadow of the power stations, and if you go there, everything is covered in ash.

I tried to get pictures of the power stations on a number of days; this was one of the few days where they weren’t hidden by fog:


Today’s drops:



(click on the picture to get a hi-res version)
They’re all nice until…

…you start giving out sweets :laughing:

We gave out a load of yoyos, but the children didn’t seem to know what to do with them; this is taken just after I showed them how to play with a yoyo :slight_smile:

Second drop at the same location:

Some more happy customers; unfortunately, I ran out of yoyos before I could give one to the girl in the blue top :cry:

Oh no! Teddy time!

A couple of families taking their goodies home:

On our way home:

One of the convoy mechanics is a tractor nut, so we stopped off to get some spare steering parts for one of his babies at this tractor scrapyard:

Oi’ve got a brand new combine 'arvester and oi’ll give you the key…
(click on the picture for a hi-res version)