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

mrflibble · 14 October 2005 23:06

Monday 3rd

Last day of distribution

Went down to a hospital in Dakovica near the Albanian border with a truck full of medical equipment and supplies. As we were passing through the centre of Dakovica, an (armed) policeman indicated to us to pull over, which we did. We indicated to him that he should speak to someone from our ■■■■■■ vehicle, and our interpreter, a resident of Dakovica and a doctor at the hospital started “discussing” the situation with him.

I say “discussing”, in the same way that Wayne Rooney or Vinnie Jones “discusses” with a football referee. It was a sight to behold - he was waving his arms very aggressively and calling the policeman a [zb]ing [zb]er and lots of other words that the auto-censor would remove - I felt sure we were going to be arrested (or worse), but by sheer luck someone who knew both our doctor and the policeman turned up and told the policeman that we were legit and there was no reason to stop us, so he let us on our way. Later our doctor told us that the policeman wanted to take a look in the back of the truck (whether he was being nosey, or wanted something to “fall off”, or what, I don’t know), but our doctor was basically telling him that it was “none of his [zb]ing business what was on the back of our truck”

Anyway, we arrived at the hospital, only to find that all the staff were on strike . After a meeting with the managing/executive/something director (basically the head honcho), we found some people who were willing to help us unload the stuff, which we duly did.

Afterwards, our guide took us to his local restaurant for a kebab. Trust me, it’s nothing like a kebab you get in Britain.

Back to the warehouse to find it now completely empty - job done

On the way back we passed a big pile-up on the outskirts of Pristina, where at least one vehicle had rolled, and another two were badly smashed up, blocking the road. Fortunately, it had happened outside a petrol station, so the two lanes past the pumps had now become the main road lanes - I think their forecourt was the busiest it’s ever been, except no-one was buying any petrol (since no-one could stop…)

That evening we went out for a big meal with all our local helpers; on the way we drove over a butterfly junction where there’d been a big crash underneath the bridge; traffic was leaving the (blocked) main road, driving straight across our dual carriage way (two lanes in each direction plus the central reservation), and going down the slip-road on the other side to re-join the road they wanted . It seems to be quite common in Kosovo that if a central reservation can be driven over to get a shorter route, people will actually do that. There were quite a few places where people were obviously doing it regularly because the grass was worn down into ruts…

Some “collatoral damage”:

Yes, even the Kosovans have Karaoke:

Interesting hotel architecture in Dakovica:

More interesting architecture:

Dakovica Regional Hospital:

The old building:

Regeneration work, funded by the Norwegian government:

Aid being delivered:

This photo was taken by accident, but came out rather well. Shows where we went:

Going through the “new old town” to the restaurant. The old town was burned to the ground by the Serbians during the war; it’s since been rebuilt sort-of as it was - the wooden buildings have all been rebuilt with new wood:

Another photo of one of the power stations, this one showing more typical conditions:

Empty warehouse. Unfortunately, my camera batteries ran flat half-way through this panorama photo

mrflibble · 14 October 2005 23:15

Tuesday 4th

Started on the long journey home. Our departure was slightly delayed as I did a tug test on the trailer (one of the other drivers had hitched up our trailer, so I wanted to do a full safety check myself), and since the legs were up and the red line was connected, I used the trailer parking brake to hold the trailer wheels while I did the tug; unfortunately, for some reason this dumped all the air out of the trailer’s reservior, so we spent 10 minutes or so building up air pressure before the trailer brakes would release. Finally, though, we were on our way.

The Kosovan-Serbian border was a bit quicker this time (although it still took Â¾ hour to cross), then on up through Serbia, stopping at a restaurant in Palic (just on the Serbian side of the Hungarian border). The convoy leaders weren’t entirely sure where the restaurant was, and sure enough they took the wrong exit from the motorway which was a complete dead end, so I had to reverse back round a corner onto the slip-road in the pitch dark. With help from another driver telling me which way to go (it was so dark I couldn’t see anything in my mirrors at all), I managed a reasonably decent reverse, and we were off again. We started off into Subotica, but they again decided we were going the wrong way, and we all had to U-turn. Fortunately, the road was wide enough for an easy turn this time (plus we were in a street-lit area). As we all finished turning, the convoy got pulled by the police, but fortunately all they wanted to do was find out if we were OK and offer directions

We eventually got to the restaurant, and parked up outside; about 15 minutes later another police car turned up with blue lights flashing; he’d heard on his radio that there was a 15-truck convoy lost in Subotica, and had stopped to offer us directions . We assured him we were OK, and had our meal, then settled down for the night. I fixed my airbed puncture, as I’d got someone to help me find the leak in the Pristina hotel’s swimming pool .

I got very little sleep (about 3 hours) as we were right on the edge of a busy road, and as every truck went by, we got hit by the buffetting (I was still sleeping in the (curtainsided) trailer).

513 km covered.

No more pictures from this point, I’m afraid - flat batteries

mrflibble · 14 October 2005 23:15

Wednesday 5th

Started off from Palic at 0700, hitting the Hungarian border nice and early. The Hungarian weighbridge put our weight at just over 16 tonnes. We carried on up through Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic, but as we passed through Budapest, one of the 7.5t trucks (the one that had problems on the Hungarian-Serbian border on the way down) cut out on one of the hills. We stopped for a couple of hours as they tried to repair it, but then we decided that the convoy had to split as us artics had to make sure we caught our Ford ferry. Most of the convoy came on with us, but we left a few trucks behind fixing the problem.

As we entered into the Czech Republic, we stopped for a driver change, and our truck took the lead as the usual leader was back in Budapest, and we were back within the coverage of my Tomtom SatNav maps. During the journey, three more warning lights came on in the cab, but we determined that they were just blown bulbs.

We stopped for food just before reaching Prague, and most of the convoy decided to stay there, but us two artics decided to carry on to get to the other side of Prague, so that we weren’t driving through Prague in the morning rush hour - we wanted to aim for the 2am Friday ferry from Vlissingen.

After getting through Prague, we started looking for somewhere to stop, but all of the MSAs were completely jammed full of trucks. After trying a few, we eventually found one where a truck pulled out just as I went into the truck park to see if there was space . The only way to get into the space was to go part-way down the slip-road onto the motorway, then reverse back into the space. Since trougher was driving, I was going to stand and direct him, but he got called away to pay for the other truck’s diesel, so I did the reverse myself. The space next to the empty one had a police van parked in it (which I really didn’t want to hit), but I did the whole reverse around two corners and into the bay with only two shunts and getting out to look once . As I was setting up to reverse in, a 7.5t rigid turned up and started to look like he might be going to park in my space, so I jumped out of the cab and did sufficient pointing to communicate that I was going to park in that space, and he’d better not park there .

We finally finished at 3:30 am, but the other artic couldn’t find enough space to park, so it went on up the road to the next MSA. Within 10 minutes, the police van left, so they could have parked there (and probably would have done if the police van had parked in the car park rather than taking up a whole truck space ).

Again, I didn’t get much sleep that night, as it was a bit cold, and I got woken up by all the trucks leaving the MSA the next morning. By this time, I was rather under the weather as I had caught a cold from one of the other convoy members.

764 km covered.

mrflibble · 14 October 2005 23:16

Thursday 6th

Woke up about 7am due to the truck movement, but couldn’t leave until 11:30am (minimum 8 hours daily rest). Cooked porridge for breakfast, then just loitered around a bit changing the blown bulbs and checking the truck over etc.

Set off at 11:30, and met the other artic at the next MSA, only to be caught up by the rest of the convoy - our late run through Prague into the early morning had all been for nothing

We ran in convoy for an hour or so, but then they stopped for a break and a driver change, and as us two artics were fine, we let them stop, while we stayed on the motorway.

At the 3 Â¾ hour point I took the second driving period, as I was starting to feel a bit better (this was the worst day of my cold).

We carried on into Germany, and this is where the overtaking bans started to become a bit of a PITA - the sections where we really wanted to overtake the slow, heavily laden trucks (the uphills) were the sections where overtaking was banned, but the moment we got to a flat or downhill section where overtaking was legal, the other trucks speeded up, and we had no speed advantage .

As we were approaching Koln at 8pm, we stopped for a driver change, as I’d been going for over 4 hours. We all got out for a quick visit to the loo, but as trougher went to start the engine, it was completely dead - no ignition at all. We checked all the fuses and relays, and that didn’t seem to be the problem, so one of the other convoy trucks was diverted to help us out. At this point, we realised that we weren’t going to make the 2am ferry, so we re-booked on the 10am one. They couldn’t find anything wrong, so eventually another mechanic was called out, who diagnosed the problem as a faulty ignition switch, and bypassed it so that the ignition was permanently on, and showed us how to start it by hot-wiring it .

Whilst this was going on, I had got back into the trailer, and went to sleep - while I was standing outside, I was shivering with the cold (both temperature and illness), and I realised that if I let it carry on like that I would be risking pneumonia or hypothermia. Fortunately the drivers of the other artic stayed up to deal with the mechanic.

We got going again at about 3am, and set off up the road. At about 7am, trougher was feeling rather tired, so we swapped again, and I took the helm to get us into Vlissingen. The SatNav routed us nicely round the Antwerp Ring Road, and near to Vlissingen, but as we didn’t have an exact location of the dock (only directions), we stopped following it as we got close, and changed to Ford’s directions.

As we were approaching it, I missed the turning into the dock, and got to the end of the road, which was a dead-end. I jumped out to see where I could turn round - there was a car park on the left, but a few too many cars to do a U-turn, and I wasn’t sure where the exit was, so I opted to reverse back down the road and into a side-road, which I did reasonably well , just letting the trailer run a bit wide.

We eventually found the dock at about 8am, and set about sorting out our stuff. After passing through the heartbeat detector (a big room where you drive the whole truck in and they shut the doors at either end), we dropped the trailers for the shunter to put on the boat, and put the units on ourselves. The boat was the “Cymbeline” - an identical configuration to the one we’d sailed over on. The crew was Russian, but I don’t know about the officers.

I tried to switch off all the unit lights, but some of them stayed on due to the hot-wiring; mindful of another TruckNet member’s experience of Ivecos on cross-channel ferries, I had to leave the unit with some of the lights on, and just hope that it would restart 11 hours later. Still, it was Ford’s unit on Ford’s ferry, therefore Ford’s problem

After showing our ID and signing onto the ship’s passenger list, we made our way to our cabins.

I kept myself awake until lunch at midday (chicken and chips), but then went straight to the cabin and slept until 4pm. Dinner was had at 5pm, then I tried to get some more sleep before we docked, but couldn’t.

After arriving back at Dagenham, our unit started OK (whew!), and so we drove off the ferry, and waited for the trailer. I initially waited in the same place where we’d given it to the shunter on the way over, but I was told that we had to pick it up from somewhere else, as if we tried to take it from the dock, we’d risk causing a union walkout . Eventually, after waving some paperwork in the right direction (to prove that we really were allowed to get our trailers back), we managed to get reunited with our trailer so that we could extract all our stuff. I returned the unit keys to Ford, with a list of everything that had been bodged on the truck (so that it wouldn’t be too much of a shock to their mechanics ), and set off down the road. I had a quick stop in South Mimms for caffeine intake, then carried on to the A419 exit of the M4 before I decided to pull off and sleep (about 00:45). I stopped in the first layby and slept until 8am, at which point I completed the remainder of the journey back to Bristol.

mrflibble · 14 October 2005 23:17

Conclusions:

Bristol to Pristina and back is a long way.

I can see why some people really like the Eaton Twin-Split box. I’m not entirely convinced yet, as there were some times when I just couldn’t get the splitter to engage, no matter what revs I did - particularly trying to change up in the 1st gear splits. There were just too many times when all I could get was neutral. Probably user error, but then if it’s a difficult gearbox to use, then maybe I might prefer a more standard range change + single splitter.

robinhood_1984 · 15 October 2005 00:47

MrFlibble:
Thursday 6th
The boat was an identical configuration to the one we’d sailed over on; the crew was Russian, but I don’t know about the officers.

Do you remember the name of the ship? I’m guessing its one of the Cobelfret owned ones with a name ending with *ine ? If so nearly all the crews are Russians and Ukranians with the odd Pole and some of them have a couple of Belgian or British officers with the remaining officers being Russian. The Victorine for example has a crew of 2 British, 2 Polish, 8 Russian and 10 Ukrainian and all the ships from that company are under the Luxembourg flag.

Oh and…fantastic read mate, very interesting indeed. One thing that puzzles me is why you slept in the trailer and not in the cab? I presume it was due to too much gear stowed on the bunks or something?

jacqueline · 15 October 2005 04:25

Wonderful diary and pics. Cheers. Great stuff. Must feel great to have done that trip. Glad to see the diarrhoea didn’t last too long.

coffeeholic · 15 October 2005 07:35

Top stuff Mr F.

smcaul · 15 October 2005 08:03

Excellent read, thanks for taking the time to write it and post it.

sheeter · 15 October 2005 08:39

Really good report of your trip, one of the most interesting I’ve read on here for some time, with plenty of photographs to complement the text.
Well done.

mrflibble · 15 October 2005 08:53

robinhood_1984:

MrFlibble:
Thursday 6th
The boat was an identical configuration to the one we’d sailed over on; the crew was Russian, but I don’t know about the officers.

Do you remember the name of the ship? I’m guessing its one of the Cobelfret owned ones with a name ending with *ine ? If so nearly all the crews are Russians and Ukranians with the odd Pole and some of them have a couple of Belgian or British officers with the remaining officers being Russian. The Victorine for example has a crew of 2 British, 2 Polish, 8 Russian and 10 Ukrainian and all the ships from that company are under the Luxembourg flag.

On the way out it was the “Symphorine”, and yes, it was Luxembourg-registered, but I haven’t been able to identify the flag it was flying (probably put there by the crew).

On the way back, I can’t quite remember the name of the ship, but it was another “-ine”, also Luxembourg-registered, and I think it began with M.

robinhood_1984:
Oh and…fantastic read mate, very interesting indeed. One thing that puzzles me is why you slept in the trailer and not in the cab? I presume it was due to too much gear stowed on the bunks or something?

Only one bunk in the cab. Trougher and I got on reasonably well, but not that well . Ford had promised to put second bunks in the cabs for us, but you know what it’s like getting large companies like that to do something…

Lasurazes · 15 October 2005 09:08